Puzzles

Puzzles are fun. Word puzzles. Number puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. I like to be able to figure them out. The process, to me, is invigorating. The more challenging the better. Like the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle. My daddy had a book of 200 of them, and he'd only done through #91 before he died, so I am attempting to do the rest. So far, I've totally completed only four out of the twenty-four I've attempted. They're difficult, sometimes grueling, but oh, the sheer satisfaction of figuring them out and checking them off! And I'll keep going back to the ones I haven't finished because sometimes I'll have an AHA moment the second or third or fourth time around. Something will finally click, and then I'll be able to get another word and another.

I think that's the thrill. Finally getting something I didn't think I knew.

Life is a puzzle, full of situations that are puzzling and people who I don't get because they are so different from me and my little world. Why don't I get as excited about life puzzles as I do about Sudoku or Crytoquote or the New York Times Sunday crossword? Maybe because the stakes are so much higher. If I don't figure out the Crytoquote today, then oh well. But if I can't solve the puzzles of poverty and wealth, giving and saving, putting my neck out there and protecting my soul, being risky and being daring, etcetera, etcetera, then what does my life mean?

Jesus said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself " (Matthew 22:37-39). Paul said, "Love never fails! Everyone who prophesies will stop, and unknown languages will no longer be spoken. All that we know will be forgotten. We don't know everything, and our prophcies are not complete. But what is perfect will someday appear, and what isn't perfect will then disappear...Now all we can see of God is like a cloudy picture in a mirror. Later we will see him face to face. We don't know everything, but then we will, just as God completely understands us. For now there are faith, hope and love. But of these three, the greatest is love" (1 Corinthians 13:8-10, 12-13).

I guess the answer to my dilemma is to get excited about pursuing love. Not the thrill of answers and complete solution of the myriad of earthly puzzles, but the joy of loving as Christ loved me and gave himself up for me as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).