Sometimes I wish God would just write the first sentence to my thoughts. Because I know there's all this stuff up there that I want to try and piece together, but I don't know which piece to pick first, or even for that matter, what piece says what. Even with things in my life, I wish God would just give me that nudge (or maybe a more noticeable nudge than normal) which tells me where to go. At times I feel like I really know where I'm going, and that God has his hand on things. However recently I had to look back on all the things that I've been prioritizing and see how they were fitting in to my whole puzzle. I don't know why I chose to describe this as a puzzle but it seems to make sense in my head. As if I find some puzzle piece lying off in the corner (one in which I had to spend awhile looking for) which seems to be the perfect piece, and I start devoting all my time to try and figure out how to make this puzzle piece fit in. However, there's no way that I will be able to make it fit in unless I realize that I can't overlook the pieces right in front of me which will form the opening for that piece.

I know that that is vague, but for some reason that's kind of what I'm thinking. Apply it however you want to yourself, but it seems that all of the sudden I've realized that my thesis and future career and wife and all these things that are "important" really aren't important unless I make time for other things and people first. The pieces that may seem too ordinary at first but are crucial for the final picture.

I wonder if God wants us to go through life like this though. If we had someone (God) sitting beside us the entire time we worked on a puzzle and telling us which piece to pick up next and where to put it, the puzzle wouldn't be exciting anymore. It wouldn't hold the same value to us when we finished it. What if God expects us to get really frustrated over not finding that one piece that we have spent days looking for so that we may begin to appreciate the complexity and beauty of the puzzle once it is completed. When you work on a puzzle, you have to put your faith in the designer of the puzzle, you expect that they put all the pieces in the box and that it really is possible to complete. It's the same with our faith in God. If we don't trust in Him and believe that all of these little pieces of cardboard actually form together to make something bigger, it would be easy to get discouraged quickly. Because we would never know whether or not it was all actually possible.

But that's the beauty of faith. Because it gives you the assurance that all of this is worth it. That you will be rewarded for your time and effort and will be able to sit back and smile in the end.

Now I guess it's a little different because God doesn't give us the cover of the box. We don't know what it all looks like together. Instead, we are left with these little images and feel that we have to immediately figure out how it all works together. If God gave us the cover of the box, life would be too easy. But this is why God has placed friends and people who love us in our lives, because they can come and give a different perspective on our puzzle and help us find that one piece.

Ok, so this is getting pretty metaphorical for me now and maybe it only makes sense to me because it relates to stuff happening around me. Sometimes its easy to write your thoughts out and other times its pretty hard. And for the record, it is a lot easier to think when the music is turned off. Sometimes I go and take quiet time for myself but leave the music on, surprisingly it is actually a tad bit distracting, go figure. Anyway, I really don't have any wonderful conclusion or anything (sorry to let you down, ha) but I just needed to write something. Hence all of the above.