The Missing Piece

My husband and I received a puzzle for Christmas from a friend. We were excited because neither one of us had put a puzzle together since we were kids! We were also looking forward to it because our busy schedules had not given us a great deal of time to do anything “together”. This, we though would be a great time to reconnect.

So we cleared some space on the dinning room table sat down together and dumped the puzzle out. 1000 small pieces scattered out before us. We worked together to turn all the pieces upright since upon pouring out of the box not all of the puzzle landed picture up.

Once all the pieces were on the correct side we both surveyed the task in front of us. It was interesting how immediately we each put together a plan in our mind of “how” we were going to go about putting this puzzle together. I had decided that I would organize all the pieces according to design. My husband decided he would collect all the pieces with a straight edge in order to put together the “frame” of the puzzle first.

As we each went about our task our giddy laughter stopped and we became focused on our tasks at hand. We stopped chatting and began to silently search for the pieces that we needed to complete our plan. It was no longer about the joyous act of putting the puzzle together….it was about completing a job. There was this sense of urgency. This feeling that “completion” was the ultimate goal. The thought of this being “together time” seemed to slowly slip away, as we each moved forward in our solitary determination.

We worked until we became tired each evening and then resumed our task the following night. At first things seemed to go quickly as pieces were snapping together on a consistent basis. Then suddenly we both started to hit a wall. Nothing seemed to fit, and no matter how hard we searched we just couldn’t find the pieces that we needed; until something changed.

I realized in my search to organize pieces by design I was not “seeing” the pieces with straight edges. And my husband realized in searching for the straight edges he wasn’t seeing the pieces by design.  As we started to keep our eyes open for not only our pieces but each others pieces, we started to make progress! I realized that when we look too intently for something, we can start to get visual “fatigue”.

The fresh eyes we each had to lend to each other’s task proved invaluable and as we completed the puzzle “together” much more enjoyable.

So where is the lesson in this story? I saw a direct correlation to how we, the church, sometimes do ministry  in the  way my husband and I were approaching the puzzle. We start out as “the church”…a “team”  excited to begin new projects and plans but sometimes quickly get so absorbed in the completion of a task that we forget that the journey is just as important. Our giddy laughter and excitement stops and we focus on our own individual task at hand sometimes also in solitary determination.

This is when “serving” becomes a burden to us. This is when we fail to connect in ways that don’t just get a task done, but that build relationship and connection. This is when ministry becomes more of an obligation then a joyous activity driven by our desire to work together. This is when serving becomes just a box we check in our idea of what being the church really is. We stop seeing each other. We stop communicating and we simply just lose sight of the big picture. The big puzzle picture that we as the church are putting together for the glory of God and the sake of the world.

The picture we’re trying to complete is the picture of Christ in the world, but we sometimes forget that the journey is just as important as the destination. The bible talks to us about the Shepherd leading his sheep. Jesus said “follow me”. Christ offers us a beautiful destination with the Father, but not at the expense of the journey. It is in the 40 years wandering in the wilderness that Gods people were able to enter the promised land. It was in years of the bondage of not knowing their destination that the people of God were eventually able to go home.

It is in the journey that God works in incredible ways. Let’s not get too caught up in the task at hand that we miss the beauty of the journey. That we share, and help and work together to put together the pieces of the incredible picture that is Christ for the world.