Rewrites Allowed!

20-24 God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him.
   When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start. Now I'm alert to God's ways; I don't take God for granted. Every day I review the ways he works; I try not to miss a trick.  I feel put back together, and I'm watching my step. God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. 
(Psalm 18:20-24)

Have you ever worked a jigsaw puzzle and been so frustrated because you could not find the last one or two pieces?  You have been working diligently to put together all the 1000 pieces only to find that the contents of what you believed to be a "whole" puzzle was really not that!  What a let down.  You simply cannot finish the puzzle without the missing piece(s).  At the most, you could say you know what it is supposed to look like "finished", but it is not truly finished without all the pieces.

Guess what....your life is just like a jigsaw puzzle in the hands of God.  He takes all the mixed up pieces, detached from each other, and skillfully places them together so that they bear the image of what he created us to be.  If we are holding back pieces, hiding them away, then the puzzle will be "incomplete" without those pieces.  You have probably heard the saying, "God wants all of your life."  Well, that is true.  If we "hold back" what we don't think should be part of the "puzzle" of our lives, the image will never be complete.

Look at what David says - I "feel" put back together!  For many of us, that "feeling" may allude us.  We simply don't "feel" put back together!  Why?  It is likely that we are withholding something from God's touch.  A puzzle is "fit together" by the hands of the one placing the pieces in just the right order.  I have tried and tried to make pieces of a puzzle "fit", only to find that what I thought belonged in the right lower corner actually fit in the left lower corner! Try as I might, that piece just doesn't "fit" where I try to place it.  The same is true when God is at work in our lives - we expect him to "fit" the pieces of our lives back together on our terms!  

We want him to "fit" us together in our timing, by our plans, as we see ourselves.  Simply put...we ask God to do it our way!  Who made this "puzzle" that we call life anyway?  God!  So, why do we resist the hand of our "maker" so much?  I guess it is like when we are trying to make the wrong piece fit in the puzzle - we just don't see any other piece that will work!  So, we try to do things on our terms because we "think" it is the right thing to do.  David had figured out that "our terms" just result in forcing pieces together that we are not ready for, won't give us a true image, or that is "close", but not close enough to what is really intended for us.

I love to work jigsaw puzzles - it is kind of relaxing to me.  It occupies my hands and my mind.  It challenges me to use my visual perception to see spacial things (the pieces).  So, I am actually using my mind in a couple of different ways when I am putting those pieces together.  Sometimes I have to stand back from the puzzle to see the object taking form before me.  I have all these "parts" put together, but don't really see how these gathering of small pieces into bigger parts actually comes together as the "whole".  The same is true with our lives - God has the perspective that we don't - he can stand back and see the bigger picture that escapes us!

The most amazing part of this passage we read today is the last verse.  God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. I don't know about you, but I always find myself apologizing to God when he has to "rewrite" my life.  The fact of the matter is that we all need a little "editing" once in a while - because we need someone to step back, see the end from the beginning, and then put it all together in an ordered fashion.  I guess the most difficult thing we have to do is to actually allow all the "content" of our lives to be at his disposal for "editing".  We just don't want some chapters included!  We want those chapters "re-written" or removed.  

Yet, when we really consider it, those chapters of our lives are actually like the puzzle pieces we just looked at...they "fit" together to make the whole picture.  When we remove them, we miss the "content" that make us exactly what we are.  For example, we may have done some things for which we are not too excited to put on display in our lives.  Yet, whenever I have been faithful to share some part of me that I would rather have kept hidden, God uses that exact thing to touch the hearts of others!  The "content" has purpose.  It is through the skillful editing of God's grace that these things of our past actually "fit" into the bigger picture of our lives.

We may not see the purpose in some of the "pieces" of our lives, but God does.  So, we need to trust him to "edit" them into the perfect order, making a beautiful display of what his grace can do!  I am so grateful for his "re-writes" in my life - and I also like to think of them as the "re-righting" of my life!  What's God got in store for you if you were to give him access to the pages of your life?

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