Puzzle Piece Prayer

My family and I like to do puzzles.  Wow, even writing that was boring.  We really do.  I’m sure you can sense the energy and excitement as you read this – ha!  Half of us really enjoy problem-solving, and the other half of us just like seeing things come together, so we use puzzles as an exercise of family time, away from screens, busyness and other things that always seems to come up when you have kids in the heart of adolescence and parents who both serve in ministry contexts.

The tension for me with puzzles is that I love to see things come together, but I am a very impatient person.  I want to see the results right away.  And depending on the size of the puzzle, my patience gets tested.  Now, I am not good at puzzles, so that of course factors in.  But my family is good at them, so I enjoy the ride and get to contribute every now and then.  My primary additive to our time together is goofing off and trying to distract everyone (something my wife really appreciates). 

The reason my patience is tested with puzzles is the same reason for anyone, I’d bet.  Because puzzles get put together one piece at a time.  You have to find the piece, identify where it goes, then locate another piece in which the first piece fits, and repeat this until the puzzle is complete.  This is both the challenge and the reward, because your work builds until the project is complete.  But this takes patience.

I have learned that PRAYER can be like putting a puzzle together sometimes.  We pray for things, often many things at once, and we hope that God answers them on our timeline and with consideration for our preferences.  But God does not operate on our timeline, and He wants HIS WAY for us, more than we want our own way.  In a sense, He often answers our prayers like putting pieces of a puzzle together – one at a time. 

Now, God can answer prayers all at once, if He chooses, but I have found He often puts the pieces together for us, one by one, in what I believe is His way of teaching us to trust Him more in each season and situation.  Have you experienced this?  Do you pray for a puzzle and get answered in pieces?  Do your prayers get answered in the puzzle piece manner in which I have described?

It might test our patience when God does this, but I believe it does much more than that.  See, each puzzle piece that gets assembled is confirmation that we are putting it all together.  When God answers your prayers one piece at a time, take some comfort in knowing He is listening, answering, and working on you.  He sees the big picture, and He knows exactly how the pieces go together.  These Puzzle Piece Prayers, as I call them, teach us to trust God more and help remind us that He knows what we need, when we need it.  So, when you want to be frustrated that God answers your prayers one piece at a time (again, not always, but when He does), remember He is putting it all together, and eventually we will look at the puzzle and be glad we have a God who knew exactly where things needed to go.