Pieces of Peace.

I love that God has a sense of humor. He's silly and fun and has no boundaries. He lives in the margins. Spends his time outside the lines. He's not rigid or full of rules and regulations. He floats. He frolics. He shimmers. He dwells in the details. And He conjures up sometimes the most ludicrous schemes, just to get us to understand Him a little bit more.

So how do I put this? God "spoke" to me tonight. And I bring out the quotes because I've never really been a fan of that expression. Mainly because it makes me feel inadequate. I don't think I've ever really "heard" God "speak" to me so I've just never felt "Christian" enough to use that expression. All those quotes to say, I think that God teaches me through showing me, not through speaking to me. So actually, God showed me a little somethin' somethin' today.

And it's funny.

Silly actually.

Krista and I have become a bit infatuated with a certain cardboardy toy. They are cheap and they are plenty and we can't get enough of them.

They come in many different shapes and sizes. They have the ability to consume you and they can gobble up your time.

They can be solitary or communal. And they bring hundreds upon hundreds of instant gratifications.

Sometimes they're jagged but easy. Sometimes they're all the same and incredibly complex. They can be vibrant and colorful. Or they can be bland and obscure.

I've never been so agitated, and yet so content, as when I'm playing with one.

They are papery and placid.

They are puzzles.

And I'm obsessed.

Krista and I discovered that we have a sincere passion for the art of puzzling. We spent our entire weekend playing with puzzles. Legitimately. Our entire weekend. We finished three and started a new one. Two 1,000 piecers and a 500 piecer. Shalacked and ready to hang on the wall.

We've created a community puzzle space. Our upstairs common room. We intend on hanging our completed puzzles around the room, so that everyday we might rejoice in our accomplishment. Our petty time, pondering puzzles. HAAAAA!! EPIC!

So tonight I had a little revelation, if you will, a moment where God just flashed a little light on a tidbit of Himself that He really wanted me to see.

Our lives are a myriad of puzzles. Our hearts are puzzles. Our minds are puzzles. Our bodies are puzzles. The God we serve is a puzzle. Quzzical. Unfathomable. Mind-bending.

So then I got to thinking...let's run with the metaphor. If everything is a puzzle, there are bound to be countless pieces. Scattered. Jagged. Sometimes colorful. Sometimes dark. And if there are countless pieces, then there are bound to be some missing ones. Hiding. Lost. Waiting to be found in the most obscure of locations. Let your mind wander and think about where all the missing puzzle pieces of this world now reside. Not the metaphorical ones. The legitimate pieces of cardboard. Where are they? The last puzzle we finished is missing three pieces because we got it for 50 cents at a thrift store. Where are those three pieces hiding. Ok back to the metaphorical pieces. They all fit together. Knit together. But when we discover a void in our hearts, in our minds, in our bodies, in our lives, we like to cram the wrong piece in it's place.

Krista has a knack for trying to shove pieces into places where they don't belong. The actual, not metaphorical. We're doing this really gnarley puzzle right now where all of the pieces are some shade of green and she struggled with getting just the edges together because they all seemed the same. There was frustration and agitation. And I feel like this is a perfect image of the way we fill our lives. We discover these voids, these missing pieces in our lives, and incessantly, we attempt to cram the wrong piece in its place.

One of our intern leaders painted the most beautiful picture for us at our intern retreat a couple weeks ago. She had been walking on the coast, not the beach, and discovered a shattered sand dollar. It had been crushed by the tire of a car. Apparently, at the coast, random cars are allowed to meander around at all hours of the day. Tangential. All of the pieces were there but there was an imperfection present in the simple brokenness of the sand dollar. We are broken into pieces. Shattered. Scattered. But God has chosen to fill and flow through those cracks. Replenish. Revive. Rejuvenate. He takes up the voids that constitute our missing pieces.

So here I am, this broken little girl, heart riddled with missing pieces. Begging to know worthiness. To know perfect love. To know fulfillment. Falling at the feet of my selfish pride, my shame, my covetous existence. Begging to allow Him entry, allow Him to invade, allow Him the instant gratification of plugging Himself into my missing pieces.

And here I find pieces of peace.

Thanks God, for the silly ways you teach me.