The Missing Piece by Amy Parsons

Our guest blogger today is Amy Parsons. Amy is a mom of two, wife of one and child of God. She is the owner of a Christian dance studio, Footlights, in Flower Mound, TX and the worship coordinator at Trietsch Memorial UMC.  Hailing from San Angelo in southwest Texas, she is a graduate of the University of North Texas – Go, Mean Green!  She has enjoyed writing for Christian Magazine Online and Trietsch’s blog, as well as her own blog at amysquirkymind.blogspot.com, and is thrilled to share with Pearls of Promise as well.

I like puzzles.

I enjoy a good word find, crossword and I love geocaching, although, I guess that’s more of a “mystery” than a puzzle. I think I get it from my grandmother who was always doing puzzles. I would stay at her house and come in in the morning and she’d have the paper doing the Word Jumble, the crosswords, and anything else. Note for our youngest readers:  A “paper” was a newspaper that would arrive in hard copy form on your doorstep and you had to turn the pages!

My grandmother’s favorite puzzle of all, however, was a jigsaw puzzle.  There was almost always a jigsaw puzzle spread out on her dining room table whenever we’d come over. It became a challenge for the family to find a puzzle she couldn’t do. “Here’s one with all the same shape and all the same color.  She’ll never get this one done! Muah-ha-ha-ha”

Not true. My grandmother would not put the puzzle away undone – ever.  She’d let us come help, but she’d go in each night and add a few pieces until it was complete.

While I’ve never had quite that much of a love of jigsaw puzzles, I enjoyed helping her and do still like solving puzzles from time to time, until a piece goes missing!

UGH! ARGH! And to quote Charlie Brown, “Aaauuuggghhhh!!!”  Nothing can be as infuriating as finishing a puzzle and one piece is missing.  I can’t even look at it without itching, and having shortened breath. I begin searching the floor all around me…then the chairs….then the box…then the closet…then the chairs again.  I can’t handle the feeling of incompletion if one piece is missing. The picture is not complete.  It doesn’t look right!

In both Luke 15:3-10 and Matthew 18:12-14, we hear Jesus speaking about a shepherd and his lost sheep. The shepherd must go after the one lost sheep even though his herd is plentiful with 99 more. He doesn’t hesitate. It’s not an option to just let the sheep go. He will search high and low until that one sheep is found and returned to the flock. Jesus is our shepherd and has that same kind of love for us – a need to have us close in His fold.

God loves each one of us so incredibly much that the picture is not complete without each one of us. He sent Jesus to give us the message of love that nothing we can ever do will separate us from that love.

No choice, no decision, no behavior, no words – nothing can separate us from God’s love.

He wants you – needs you to complete the picture.  You are important.  You are loved.