Solving puzzles is an art form.

It starts out looking easy. You look at the perfectly set pieces, the jigsaw template and instinctively think I’ve got this.

That would be me just before I mix up the pieces and spend -more than a few- hours trying to not bang my head into a wall.

A good puzzle will do that to you.

Some of the pieces are fairly easy to piece together; but that’s usually a gotcha move.

Too many times when I’m struggling to finish a puzzle, I’m reminded of the open book tests we had back in school.

Forget regular tests, these were the real deal.

It was as if the examiners knew that regardless of what information we had available, it wasn’t going to make any difference.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve held a puzzle piece and thought, this is an extra the manufacturers just threw in. They never really intended it to be used.

All the while knowing there are not supposed to be any parts left over.

Enter God, the ultimate puzzler.

Some of the pieces He fits together just don’t make sense at first…or third glance.

Want examples?

Jacob, the deceiver, produces Joseph who chooses to go to jail rather than compromise what he knew to be right.

Hannah, relentlessly teased by her rival on account of being barren, ends up the mother of Israel’s most formidable prophet since Moses and is eventually called mother of six¹.

God allows Lazarus to worsen, die, and then as if for effect, brings him back four days after the fact.

We know the stories ends well. We know if God started it, He will finish it.

What we don’t know is how.

You know what’s cool?

Sometimes we don’t know and then suddenly we do.

Martha knew Jesus was the son of God when she said, but even now, I know that whatever you ask God, he will do².

Even then, she really didn’t know that death was no match for Jesus.

A few moments later when she saw Lazarus walking out of the tomb, she knew.

Someone told me recently that if I had been battling with unanswered prayer, maybe it was because God had answered my prayer but I hadn’t seen it yet.

To be entirely honest, that platitude did not bring out the best in me.

What do you mean I haven’t seen it yet?

Now that I’ve thought it over a bit, there is something to that.

Sometimes I stare at puzzle pieces I have in my hands for what seem like forever, and then suddenly I see where they are to go.

Nothing has really changed. My perspective has just shifted.

Like Martha, I thought I knew, but now I really know.

Hannah thought she was being punished because she was unfruitful. Turns out God was saving her womb for the man who would anoint Israel’s greatest King.

Jacob believed Joseph to be dead.

Turns out God had sent him ahead to provide survival for Jacob, his descendants and everyone else in the known world at the time.

When God was ready, He lifted the blinders and the pieces suddenly made sense.

Truth is, there have been many times I’ve looked at a part of my life and seen a giant unsolvable puzzle. Some pieces fit, and other parts I couldn’t explain if my life depended on it.

But I believe

That God does craft happy endings

That if He starts something, He will finish it.

That one day I will go from thinking I know, to actually knowing.

That someday He will unveil his grand masterpiece

Maybe, just maybe, that’s a truth you need to know.

                        ¹1Sam 2v21

                       ² John 11v22