I love puzzles. The last one I finished was particularly challenging. The image on the box looked innocent, childish even. An unnamed sea with isles seen from above and a couple of volcanoes. Each isle is home to a group of people who live their best lives. In one isle live archeologists, on the other – space explorers, and so on. The figures are miniature, distinct from their neighbors in dress and activity.
Inside the box were two envelopes. The instructions: start with the heavier one. Leave the second one sealed until you use all the pieces in the first and get familiar with them.
Obviously I began with the frame. Very quickly I realized I have dozens of pieces with one straight edge – pieces I thought were meant for the frame – but I had no use for them. The frame was complete without them. What was I supposed to do with these ones? Where do they belong?
As I kept working, I realized they belong inside, within the frame. This puzzle is not divided only into islands, but also into four sections of different sizes, with borders made of sharp, unusual angles.
Across the waters and all the islands pop up many pink tubes, whose role in the picture was unclear at that point. They seemed sporadic and redundant.
Open the Sealed Envelope
When I opened the second envelope, it felt like another chapter of the same story. Like a seal being opened. There were more pieces inside, most of them pinkish. Strange! The puzzle I had just completed was whole. Nothing was missing.
The instructions inside the envelope were: split the original puzzle into four parts, along those sharp, unusual angles, and move each section to a new location on the table.
The Happy Isles Puzzle split to four parts
If the island’s inhabitants could feel, how would they react to the shift of tectonic plates, the earthquake I was causing by moving them around and changing the map and their entire world?
A large gap formed between the four sections. Into that space I was instructed to place the additional pieces. A massive creature, with scary face and pink arms, reaching into each of the islands and under the ocean, was revealed in the very center. It connected the various islands into one story with a broader meaning.
Just Like Us
It’s impossible to understand the full meaning of God’s full story while we focus our attention on the tiny island we live on, while trying to maintain some sanity and routine, thinking this is the whole story.
The story is so much bigger. His Kingdom consists of our congregations and organizations, but the in between is what really matters. This is what makes it a Kingdom, not just a collection of projects, ministries and isles. I am training myself to be aware of these hidden edges of “arms.” At times they seem to go nowhere, but I know they are there to connect the dots and expose the Big Story.
And for the bigger story to be revealed, foundations have to be shaken and shifted around. It’s painful, even frightening, but this is how the Kingdom breaks forth. Not in obvious ways, but through causing mountains to change their location.
“The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed,” seen with regular eyes (Luke 17:20). Our basic assumption should be – It exists, It expands, It will eventually be fully seen, but until then, it comes with shaking, and at times, even looks like it is controlled by an aweful creature with long arms.
In my opinion, this is one of the unseen aspects of this war. God is holding tectonic plates, or puzzle pieces that make up the four corners of the earth, and is shaking them to create a new space. In doing so, He reveals before our eyes His Eternal Arms, that have been working unseen but about to be fully revealed. Arms that connect distinct peoples into one complete story.
How am I Doing?
It’s tough to live in a war zone. I live in Jerusalem, and in comparison to other areas in Israel, it hasn’t been that bad here. Before the ceasefire started, we had days where we didn’t have even one siren go off. In the center of the country it was paralyzing. Up north it still is. The ceasefire is with Iran, not with Lebanon, and the missiles keep flying in that direction throughout the day and night. They can’t even breath in between, and the sirens sometimes sound only after the missile fall. So dangerous.
I have an excellent safe room downstairs. Multitudes of families in Israel don’t. So I can focus on that, on the level of national exhaustion after 2.5 years of war, but I am making myself daily see beyond, look at this region from above, as if I sit in my Father’s bossom, simply because my faith tells me the story – which I can only see some of its pieces right now, and many of them simply don’t fit in and don’t make sense – is much, much bigger.
Orna Grinman | Ot OoMofet Ministries | A Sign and Example 