We See A Puzzle — God Sees How It All Fits Together

Greatness comes from doing many small things well.

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” Matthew 20:26

When the boys were growing up, they each wanted to have superpowers. They grew up in the age of the Ironman and Avengers movies so quite often the conversations in the truck on long trips would turn to superpowers.

“I think I’d like to be able to fly,” one would say.

“But then you’d have to have a cape!” another would say, trying to make a joke.

“I like capes,” would be the reply. “They’re cool.”

“Yeah, but they get sucked up into jet engines,” would be the reasoning. “I saw it on a movie.”

Then the conversation would devolve into — “Uh-uh.” “Nuh-uh.” Over and over and over again.

One day we started talking about what our real life superpowers are. Each of us has something we’re really good at. For some it may be touching your nose with your tongue. Others may be double-jointed. Others might be able to jump high. Or know the secret of putting a ring on one of the bottle necks at the County Fair.

My middle son has a special and uncanny super power. He can just look at a normal piece of string, wire, extension cord or rope, blink his eyes and presto! A tangled up birds nest.

His grandpa and I used to argue over who would be in charge of his fishing pole when we took the kids to the lake.

“OK,” I’d say. “It’s time for you to do your grandpawerly duty.”

“That’s OK, Buddy,” he’d tell me. “I’ve got something he can’t mess up. I’ve got my old Zebco 33 fishing reel. That sucker is bullet-proof!”

Thirty minutes later he’d be sweating with exhaustion from trying to untangle the Gordian knots that magically appeared.

Sometimes our superpow- ers stick with us. Just last month, we were decorating the Christmas tree. I spent an hour untangling a long string of decorative beads. When I was ready to put them on the tree I asked my son to help.

“Dad, are you sure about this?” he innocently asked.

“It’ll be fine. All you have to do is just hand them back to me. They’re all untangled.”

Two rounds around the tree was it. Two rounds!

I handed a perfectly looped string of beads to him and he gave me back a bird’s nest as big as a basketball.

The boys all got a big laugh out of that.

“Sorry, Dad,” he shrugged. “You know it’s my superpower.”

Now, I know that God definitely works in our lives. Sometimes in ways we would have never expected. Before I had kids, if you asked me what my superpower was, I could have told you I’m really good at puzzles. All kinds of puzzles. Give me a maze and I can tell you the fastest way out just by glancing at it. Give me a 10,000-piece puzzle and it would be glued up the next day. Or give me a tangled up ball of string and presto! It would be perfect.

God complements us that way. I’m good at untangling things. My son’s superpower is tangling things up by just touching them.

You have a superpower too. And someone who can complete you. Because God has made us all to complement each other.

Capes are optional. Let us pray. Our Great God. When we look at the world, we see a huge gigantic puzzle. We don’t see the ways in which we can complement each other and make each other whole. But you do. We pray today that You will send into our lives people who will complete us and make us whole in ways we can never imagine. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The blessings of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you.