missing piece

 You dont know theres a piece missing until the very end.

Ive been doing jigsaws. Purchased from charity shops - which is always just a tad risky because theres always a chance that they aren't complete. And you don't discover that until the very last minute.  Then theres that annoying moment when you realised there are four or five spaces to fill and only three or four pieces left in the box.  And the picture you've spent ages constructing will be forever incomplete.

I was thinking about this last night as I came to the end of the puzzle Id been doing and realised that there was one piece missing.  I checked on the floor and in the box in the hope that it might be hiding somewhere . But it wasnt. 

There was another thing I noted about this jigsaw  - despite it being a really busy, complicated picture it was relatively easy to do.  The pictures with not much going on -sea and sky and fields -are the really tricky ones to complete.

What's the point? I hear you cry.

Well, Im not entirely sure. But my ponderings are about our lives being like a jigsaw which we are piecing together as we go along.  We all have a tendency to look at each other's picture and compare with our own. We might see someone who looks as though they are all sky and sea and ease, calm, tranquillity, not realising that their jigsaw is more complicated than it seems.  Or we see someone whos life is colourful and busy and full and we think that they must be working harder than they actually are at putting the pieces together.  But regardless of the size, the shape, the complexity of our lives what really matters is that at the end of our days every part is in place and nothing is missing. Jesus isn't missing.  Salvation isn't missing. Eternal life isn't missing.

I watched my Mum die yesterday.  A few days ago she said to me ' I think you have done your part in 'handing me over' but Im not sure if I've done my part'  She wasnt sure if, as she came to complete her jigsaw, all the pieces would be there. Would she get to the end and find the crucial final bit missing?

I dont know the answer to that question. But........

Months and months ago, in the same week, I lost my passport and my house keys. They just vanished. And despite much searching of all the places I thought each could possibly be..... they remained lost.

Until now.  Because yesterday Keith messaged me to say he had found my house keys. In Sam's bedroom in his rented house!! Where they must have been dropped when we helped him to move in in October.   And today Keith found my passport. Behind the washing machine!!  And somehow in my brain this is not a coincidence.  What was lost has been found. The thing that was missing is no longer missing. Im taking it as a sign that Mum did get to put the final piece into her puzzle yesterday and that when she stood back to take a look at the finished article she was able to see Jesus woven through every detail.

Or maybe Im reading way too much into it all and I just need to buy new jigsaws instead of second 😁hand ones and be more careful about where I set things down.