Fit Together

My perfect bride likes to put together puzzles. Down on the farm she almost always has one spread out on the game table – 30,000 pieces (or so it seems) and she has this idea about how those pieces should “match up.” Sometimes, when I help her (she calls it “bothering”), I conclude that just sticking them together in the most convenient manner is the solution to a looooooong afternoon. “That doesn’t fit there,” she will say. “Stop messing it up.”

Last night our Pastor was long-windedly expounding the last couple of verses of Chapter 2 in Ephesians. The conversation was about God’s design for building His Temple and Paul says, “The whole building is being fitted together. . .for God’s dwelling place.” Perhaps the “puzzle” thing is an apt analogy (which the old Pastor missed). Pieces have to go in a certain place in a certain way. When we try to put His (God’s) dwelling together in a manner that is suitable to us we miss his perfect design. We (the pieces in His puzzle) have to be placed exactly by His Spirit if the the building is to be as he designed it.

Just as a puzzle put together incorrectly provides a skewed view of what it pictures, so the Church of Jesus Christ (I’m talking now about each local body of believers) which fails to allow His Spirit to “fit” the parts and pieces, never becomes all He designed it to be, accomplished the ministry for which it is called, or become the Light and Salt of the community in which it is placed.

Just as I ought to keep my hands off the puzzle my bride is fitting together, so I need to keep my hands busy doing the work for which I am gifted and to which I am called – leaving Him (the Spirit of God) to build, perfectly, His holy Temple.