Important to ensure we have the whole picture before we rush to conclusions

LIKE many people, working our way through this third lockdown, jigsaws have become a central feature of our lives.

This week my wife began a new puzzle that was a Christmas present. She made a good start but then confusion set in. There were pieces that didn’t seem to have any part of the picture on the cover of the box.

It was only looking on the base of the box that revealed her mistake. The cover picture was only part of the whole design. I do wonder how long she might have struggled on if she hadn’t discovered this.

Jigsaws apart, it is important in all areas of life to ensure that we have the whole picture before we rush to conclusions and take actions that might cause problems further down the line.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to making a decision about what we are to make of Jesus Christ. Jesus once asked his followers what people were saying about him. The answers reveal that people had got hold of part of the picture but not seen the whole truth. The disciples said: “They say you are a great teacher, a prophet equal to the revered prophets of the Old Testament”.

We hear similar things nowadays. Over the years, I have heard people look at certain aspects of Jesus’s character and describe him as a radical, a politician, a mystic, a rebel. All these qualities can be extracted from many of the things Jesus said and did but they are just parts of the jigsaw.

It was Peter who stumbled on the big picture. Jesus asked him: “Who do you say I am?” His reply? “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”. If we miss this aspect of the things Jesus said about himself then we will have a distorted picture and that might mean that we miss out the most important aspect of the life of one who was once described as “the greatest person who ever lived”.

Peter saw the whole picture and, with careful study, we can too.