Dealing with Puzzles

What's your strategy for putting a puzzle together? I like to find all the pieces with straight edges and fit them together to form the outer boundary of the puzzle. Then I work on the interior. I group like colors together. I look at the picture on top of the box to see what goes where. If there is any lettering or one part of the picture that stands out, I begin putting that section together. Completing one section motivates me to keep working on the next and the next until I've put the whole thing together.

While reflecting on all the time and thinking required to put a puzzle together, I thought, Dealing with life is somewhat like putting a puzzle together! 

That task is even more challenging since we're rarely given even a quick look at "the big picture" of what God has ordained for our lives. (Sometimes we don’t bother to ask Him to give us a glimpse of what's really going on.) Since we think we have to figure things out on our own by using the few pieces (clues) we've been given, we become hyper-focused on the ones we do have. If many of those pieces look like "more of the same” (as they often do), we struggle to figure out how or if they fit together. Sometimes we try (unsuccessfully!) to force pieces of the puzzle into places they don't belong. If we believe we're missing some of the pieces we need to solve life’s puzzle, we  search everywhere for them, even in unlikely places, because we’re desperate to see the “big picture.”

Instead of struggling to put our lives together on our own, wouldn't it be a good idea to do what James 1:5, NKJV, says?

If any of you lacks wisdom, 

let him ask of God, 

who gives to all liberally

and without reproach,

and it will be given to him.