Grandmother Jones loved to work on elaborate puzzles. On Saturdays she invited her grandchildren over to help finish these masterpieces.
How fulfilling would a puzzle be if it had only one piece? If a puzzle box said, “Number of Pieces: 1,” that would be ridiculous. You can’t have a puzzle with only one interlocking piece!
God’s creation, like a puzzle, has many pieces. God created each one of us as a unique interlocking piece. After he created the first piece, a man named Adam, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). So he created another piece, giving Adam a woman to love and be with.
God felt it was important that we not be left by ourselves. We are incomplete without others.
Grandmother Jones stressed in her Saturday puzzle time with her grandchildren that they be careful with an incomplete puzzle. A puzzle’s strength comes only when all the interlocking pieces have been connected.
When we are “interlocked” with friends and loved ones, we are stronger. That is the way God intended it from the very beginning.
Grandmother Jones also reminded her grandchildren to work on puzzles on a stable surface and in a comfortable environment.
The same holds true in our life. God saw a need for a good place where we could interlock with the appropriate people who could make our lives complete. So he created the church. The church is a place filled with people who recognize the importance of each interlocking piece — that’s you!
God says of those who trust in Jesus as their Savior, “You are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you, too, are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22).
God has made you a part of his “puzzle.” He wants your friends connected too. Don’t let them be left out of his masterpiece.
Pastor R.
