In praise of jigsaw puzzles

There is something wonderful about doing a jigsaw. You start out with a box and you have some idea that inside is eventually going to be a large version of the picture on the box, but sometimes bits are covered up by the title and sometimes there isn't a picture.

I usually start with the edge pieces and once the framework is complete putting the content inside it is the idea. There are usually prominent parts that are easier to put together and then other areas where you really have to examine the pieces closely because you're not really sure until you get down close whether they fit and if they are the right ones.

Then eventually you get left with just the really tough part where everything actually seems the same (like the sky) and you just creep on putting in piece after piece in a monotonous effort that stretches sanity. At this point I sometimes lay the pieces out systematically and try every piece in turn every way round in each space until the right one is found. The smart way of course is to look for the notches and grooves and match the notches to the grooves, there is always a perfect match.

As you near completion and have maybe a hundred pieces on the table it is easy to think that along the way some have gone missing.

If you have been careful though, kept the puzzle together and followed through then you get to the last part where there are maybe thirty pieces left, they all go in so easily and then the fight over who puts in the last piece!

It's so amazing when it goes in and everything is perfect.

Only then can you look at the jigsaw and see the whole picture, and bits that seemed unfathomably strange make up the most beautiful bits of the picture.

I think that's a bit like life. And maybe the Church?

Footnote:

Once all the pieces are in and you've stared at the perfect, completed picture for a wee while, there is that humbling moment that you realise you can no longer justify hogging the dining room table any more and you crumple it all up and replace it in the box! I think that's a shame so I have started photographing my jigsaws so I can look back on them because in reality you're never going to do that same 3000 piece puzzle again, now are you?

Pass them on to someone else, donate them to your library or a worthy cause! A completed jigsaw is like a sign of the end times.

Anyway there go a couple of my memories...

Ewoks and Onesimus

Why does everything good always have to be serious too?

This morning listening to the radio on my way to work I heard someone complaining about the Ewoks in The Return of the Jedi. Getting in the way of our enjoyment of the grand climax to the first trilogy of Star Wars films! And Jar Jar Binks doing the same thing for the second trilogy (except that I remember him having his main role in the first film, so it hardly ruined the climax!)

Well I liked the Ewoks. What’s wrong with having little comic characters in an epic film as a bit of light relief? These weird but cuddly creatures were only following in the same tradition as those mysterious people in the first film who wobbled across the sand in their cloaks and hoods and you only ever saw their eyes.

If God had meant everything to be serious he wouldn’t have given us comedy.

There is laughter and comedy throughout history and throughout the Bible. What’s more comic than Balaam’s surprise when his ass has a go at him for being so stupid that he couldn’t see the angel of death blocking his road? Or the irony in Paul returning the formerly useless slave, Onesimus to his Christian master, in the letter to Philemon, because in turning and giving his life to God, his name is finally accurate.

It’s good to know that God has a sense of humour, because he invented it. So when sometimes when disaster strikes or we feel neglected or at the end of our tether it seems God is laughing at us, be reassured. He cries with us in these times.

And when things go amazingly well, God shares our joy. God laughs with us, but never at us. Because he loves us.