Puzzle

Picture a 1000-piece puzzle before it’s assembled, but without a picture on the box.  The first thing you do is put the outside pieces together.  That’s your foundation, so to speak.  As you begin to fit the inside pieces together, you find yourself making little “clusters” of pieces that fit together perfectly.  They become small pictures within the big picture, but it is still not clear what the whole picture looks like.  By looking at the clusters, you might be able to guess how the finished product will look… or you might not.

When we read the Word of God, I’m guessing that more times than not, we read many of the same passages over and over through the years, but neglect reading the whole Bible.  We get in our minds a picture of who God is, but we don’t necessarily see ALL of His attributes or, in other words, the WHOLE picture.  The passages that we read are like the little “clusters” that we find in the puzzle.  We use those clusters when we talk about the Lord.  Each cluster shows us some of His attributes, but we don’t really get a true picture of WHO GOD IS.  We need to put ALL of the pieces together to really understand.

God wants those of us who know Him to share what we know with those who need to hear.  But it doesn't stop there.  If we really love Him, then we should do everything we can to get to know Him better, including reading the Bible from beginning to end, day after day.  Only then will we be able to present Him more accurately to the world.

For the first 38 years of my walk with the Lord, I read the Bible… but not every day.  I could tell you a lot about Jesus, after reading the New Testament over numerous times.  But during that time, I never read the Word from beginning to end.  Then, 2 years ago, I started that journey.  It was amazing what I learned about God that I never knew before!  I not only read, but felt more than ever, the amazing love our God has toward us!  And I began to understand why so many of His people in the Old Testament had to die because of their disobedience, even though He loved them with an everlasting love.  It took me about a year-and-a-half to get through it all, reading every single day.  And I will continue on as I have started, because I know what it’s done for my life.

It takes time and effort to fit pieces of a puzzle together, but in the end you’re left with the beautiful picture it has created.  So it is with reading God’s Word, but you don’t have to wait until the end to see in a better light who God is.  Every day that you read, He will reveal more and more of Himself to you.  What might start as an effort, will eventually become pure joy…