“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV
After weeks of detailed perseverance, the moment of anticipation I️ long awaited was upon me; I️ finally arrived at the apex. To have the satisfaction of tapping the final piece into its spot. Oh how gratifying it is, a sense of perfect completion.
Yet this coveted place continues to elude me. Every single one of the pieces appeared to fit like a glove but no matter how many ways I tried, that last piece just wouldn’t slide in.
Can you see it?
Baffling.
“I should’ve known,” I️ sarcastically thought to myself, “Isn’t this just a portrait of life.”
Lacking a sense of closure from a mere incomplete puzzle caused me to reflect.
I’m not sure why we strive toward that nebulous “I’ve arrived!” sense of being. If we’ve given more than just a glance at Truth, we’ve been saturated in the awareness that in this life, abiding in Jesus is the only way we’ll get there. Not because “we’ve arrived.” But because HE–our Great Alpha and Omega, The Beginning and End– has.
“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25
Just like my nineteen-year-old-self’s first thought after my parents handed me the car keys to that shiny red Probe was “Now I need a portable CD player,” any hint of “I’ve arrived” from a worldly standpoint quickly loses it’s luster.
“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
Matthew 16:26a
And only He can cease our striving. He transforms the most furious of lions into the tamest of lambs. He calls us to “let it go,” to stop cramming in the misfit puzzle piece. To be like the hot air balloons pictured on the puzzle, comfy existing in the plane between this life and the next, and to trust Him to bring it all to completion.
“…He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion…” Philippians 1:6
For Believers, fitting in on earth is an anomaly. But knowing Jesus erases any weight of that burden, because when we’ve found Him, nothing else–no one else–can even come close.
The Pastor’s words penetrated deeply “I realize I am a stranger sojourning through this world…that I have a home somewhere beyond the banks of the swelling Jordan. And I realize why I can never fit, because I am not at home…not yet.”
And after a couple of weeks pondering this incomplete puzzle, He helps me realize, the picture can’t yet be completed because His work in my life is not over and done. The outcome won’t be visible until I️ see Him face-to-face.
“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
1 Corinthians 13:12 NLT
It’s as if He whispers, “Keep your boots laced up, the quest continues.”
And as He so gently did in 2012 when Dad’s cancer diagnosis threatened with looming questions, “What if it’s dad’s last…?”
“What if…”
He reminds me again, “Focus on the journey, not the outcome. I’ve got Kingdom work for you to accomplish.”
