The Trouble With Jigsaw Puzzles

One morning, several weeks ago, a friend asked me to meet for coffee. She wanted to talk with me about something I had said in Bible study, a remark that had raised some concerns in her mind. We got our coffee and sat down to chat. I was able to clarify what I had said and why I had said it, and it set her mind at ease.

As our conversation drifted to other topics, she commented on the trouble she had had recently with a jigsaw puzzle. Now I am not a big fan of jigsaw puzzles, but I do know the basics of putting them together: start with the corners, then fill in the edges and work towards the middle. My friend is an avid 'jigsaw-puzzle-doer' and, of course, knows all that. And she followed the basics with this one: she started with the corners, then filled in the edges and started working towards the middle. But the further along she got, the more distorted the puzzle looked. The pieces just weren't fitting together the way they should. Finally, in great frustration, she went back to the beginning, inspecting the corners and the edges. What she found surprised her. She had put 2 pieces together along an edge that looked like they fit, but they really didn't - there was another piece that belonged between them. It had looked fine for awhile, but as the puzzle grew, that one little missing piece along the edge threw the whole picture out of whack. It meant going back and undoing some of the puzzle, but once she put the missing piece in, the picture came together properly, without any distortion.

My friend paused for a minute after telling me this, and then noted a little sheepishly: " I think that's a picture of what I did with your remark from Bible study. I took what you said and added it to something I had read, and came to a conclusion regarding what you meant and where you were headed. But then I started thinking 'That just doesn't sound like the Lydia I know' and that's why I wanted to talk to you. Now I realize that I put 2 pieces together that didn't fit and came up with a distorted picture."

I am so thankful that my friend came to me with her concerns. My experience in life has been that alot of people don't do that; I don't always do that. It is much easier to sit back and put the pieces together in our heads. We come up with our own conclusions, conclusions that can be wrong - often dangerously so, especially when we act on them as if they were truth. Not only is drawing conclusions dangerous, it expressly goes against Jesus' warning to stop judging by appearances and instead make a correct judgement (John 7:24). Judging by appearances leads to wrong conclusions. Instead, the Bible encourages us to go to each other when we have concerns or offenses, to talk one-on-one and clear things up. It doesn't mean that we will always find out that our conclusions were wrong; these conversations may lead to difficult conclusions. But then we can speak the truth in love and continue to follow God's instructions for what to do with these concerns or offenses. Or, we may find, like my friend, that we were completely off base, building a distorted picture of a brother or sister in Christ. It takes some grace and humility, but our relationships would be so much better off if we followed God's instructions for handling offenses and concerns, instead of basing our conclusions on our own reasoning and not-so-expert ability to put together a jigsaw puzzle.