Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Puzzle Pieces

I had a friend once tell me that the thing she loved about me was that I know exactly what I want in life.

I thought about that today, and didn't know if I wanted to laugh or cry. What an elusive thing, to know exactly what you want. I've been debating if I should call and tell her, just so she doesn't hold me up on too high of a pedestal.

I suppose that she is right. Ultimately, all I want is to glorify God. Truly. May the consequences of my sin demonstrate His wrath and glorify Him. May my need for a savior glorify Him. May He be glorified in the way He has provided me a savior. May He be glorified in my depression. May He be glorified by providing my joy. May my life glorify God and nothing else.

But then, there are the day-to-day decisions that must be made, and I feel like I often don't know which decision will glorify God. At that point, I have no idea what exactly I should do, ought to do, or want to do.

At this very moment in my life, I feel like I have a lot of puzzle pieces, but they don't seem to belong to the same puzzle. I don't understand how they are supposed to fit together. I don't even know why I have the pieces I have. I can't connect any of the pieces, and I can't find the border pieces.

If you can't find any border pieces, at least try to find the corners - start with the corners. Ok, that's easy. The corners of the puzzle would have to be God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Church (which is where I am). Great...that's like saying I want to glorify God. It's a good thing to understand, that the corners of my life puzzle have to be the trinity and God's Church, but what does that mean for my day-to-day decisions? Back to the border pieces. None of my pieces connect (that I can tell) and none of them are border pieces...at least not to me.

I had a good complaint prayer session with God this morning. I yelled at Him (don't worry - I fully worship Him, thanked Him, and confessed to Him first): I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO BE DOING AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT THESE PUZZLE PIECES MEAN. PLEASE. JUST. TELL. ME.

I guess my friend was right - I really do know what I want. What I want in life is to know very clearly what God wants. And it would be nice if he would just send me an email or something and let me know. He wrote me a whole book, and it's a good book, but I'm not getting the message clearly enough.

2 comments:

Keziah said...

This is a great post, because it describes exactly how I feel right now! There are all these pieces scattered around me, but nothing seems to connect and I don't know where any of them are supposed to go. Thank you for the reminder of where the corner pieces are!

Kellie said...

Interesting... I bet more Christians are in this spot than we realize. I wonder what that means. Part of the frustrations of the "puzzle problem" is that I feel so alone in the confusion.

Praying for you...