Missing Pieces

During my three weeks in Romania, I tackled a 1,000 piece puzzle.  It was a great time filler on slow days and evenings.  Normally I start a puzzle by putting the frame together.  But this is one of those uniquely cut puzzles where you can't easily pick out the edge pieces.  So I worked by sections without the border. 

About halfway through, I began to suspect that I was missing a few pieces.  I had a few completed sections with holes in them, and no matter how much I searched, those distinctive pieces did not turn up.  It took a long time to finish the frame, and I was afraid there would be a chunk of it missing.  The closer I got to finishing, the more empty spots popped up!  But I am a die-hard puzzler once I get in the mood, and I hate to quit on an unfinished picture, especially so far into the game.  So I determined to finish this one before I left, no matter how many pieces were missing!

In the end, I counted at least 30 holes in my puzzle!  They were scattered all over, so you could still basically get the whole picture.  Of course it's disappointing to have a puzzle full of holes, but in the larger scheme of things, 30 out of 1,000 isn't a huge number, and it's still a beautiful picture.  It's just broken.

That puzzle is a picture of us.  I think of Scott and Carolyn's girls.  They have been through rough places in their young lives.  They are broken and damaged.  But they are beautiful young women with incredible potential, deeply loved by God. 

Their missing pieces make them rough around the edges.  It makes successful living very difficult for them at times.  It makes life difficult for those love them and are helping them.  But does that make them any less worth it?  Should we cast them aside because they are missing 30 pieces?  Should they resign themselves to living in defeat as victims of circumstance for the rest of their lives?  Sometimes that is what they want to do, because that mindset has been deeply etched into them through the pain of rejection, abandonment, and abuse.  They often revert back to this thinking when things get hard, and it requires a great deal of patience to walk through it with them. 

But God says they are worth it.  He says you are worth it too.  He sees the whole picture.  You are His masterpiece, holes and all.  Jesus Christ wants to come in to your broken, empty spaces and make you a whole person.  Don't get me wrong, it's not an instant removal of suffering.  This is a process.  We will still experience some of the pain and dissatisfaction of holes in this earthly life.  It is the God-built longing for our true home and our final state of wholeness in Heaven.  God knows what we will be then.  It is the beautiful, priceless work of art that He set out to create from the beginning of our lives!  And He is willing to walk with us through all the broken places and missing pieces until the day we see the face of Christ and become like Him! 
"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is."  1 John 3:2

Just think how glorious that will be!  And you know, I like to imagine that when God finally fills in our holes, it's going to be with precious jewels!  Because He gives beauty for ashes and joy for mourning.  What a beautiful Savior!