Looking for the Right Piece

Because I am an only child, I grew up hanging out with my cousins for company. We spent many summer days sitting around a card table with jigsaw puzzle pieces spread out in front of us. We would spend hours in complete silence as we concentrated on whatever section of the puzzle captured our interest (translate “seemed easiest”).

Somehow the puzzles got put up on the shelf when I began to raise my own family. We moved around a lot while Steve was in the army and, when he retired and started another career in northern Virginia, the kids were older and our lives were just too busy and full to take on a hobby that could eat up hours of time. I still took puzzles when we went on vacation and I had time to sit and enjoy them.

Imagine my delight when I was last in northern Virginia and I discovered my son’s family sitting around a puzzle table! This week they are all here in South Carolina and we are celebrating the “August girls” birthdays – my son’s fiancé Erika, her daughter Eliza, Claire, Maggie and I all share August birthdays. We opened a table full of presents and one of mine was a puzzle with a picture of, how fitting, a beagle puppy, daisies and a basketful of green apples.

So we’ve spent hours together working this puzzle. And this morning, while the other adults were playing golf and the kids were still sleeping, I came out to work on it a little while I watched for hummingbirds.

This puzzle has 1500 pieces. I was putting apples together and, as I picked up the box to plow through the pieces, it occurred to me that there were probably 200 pieces, of which many were apple ones, already lain out on the table.

We love God and we want to serve Him. So we go searching for just the right place and opportunity. Don’t get me wrong. Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” And I believe He has done just that. So I do pray hard about what it is that He wants me to do.

But I also believe that I spend a lot of time “looking in the box for the right piece”, when there are “pieces” all around me that I could work with – and that would serve God.

Ride on down the Highway

I had another sweet Virginia friend stop in yesterday to sit on my porch and drink a little sweet tea. I don’t flatter myself. I live on the 95 corridor; so the world does pass close to me and frequently enough. But can I just say how very much it means to me to be able to share my gentle world down here with my dear friends from up there?

Friendship is surely one of God’s kindest creations. I have books with nothing but sweet sentiments that could fill several blogs. But Christian friendship? Oh, that is the best. There is some common ground there that immediately turns us into a “cord of three strands”. We laugh and pray together and we both know that we hold the most important Person in history on the highest ground. And it’s always a rewarding time.

So this is a short one today. I just felt the need to say thanks, Donna, for a lively cart ride and to remind all my Virginia friends (and my Arkansas family) that we’re close to 95, easy to get to – until you leave the interstate at least – and there’s always a pitcher of tea waiting. You brighten my world. Only thing better would be to get you all together with my South Carolina friends. You would enrich each other; but I’ll see to that in Heaven.

Ecclesiastes 4:10, 12
If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.