SEARCH & FIND

When my three grandsons come to visit, I can count on #3 (in first grade) wanting to do one of two things (after the traditional snack time). It's typically either play checkers with me (he'd play chess, too, if I was willing and knew how—remember, he's only first grade!) or do the “word search” puzzle in the local newspaper. That's the brain-teaser feature that disguises words going up, down, backwards and diagonally. He's a pint-sized pro at that. Did I say he was only first grade? So we sit at the kitchen table and search for all the words.

His enthusiasm for this newspaper word puzzle feature astonishes and amuses me. And I also think of how the Bible pictures “searching” in Proverbs. Presumably written by Solomon (considered the “wise” king, although his marital and fatherly life wasn't necessarily wisdom-saturated), it's full of aphorisms that seem simple at first glance. Then they deepen.

In the case of my puzzle-loving grandson, I think of Proverbs 2, and its admonition to seek wisdom and understanding. Most memorable (and often memorized) are verses 1-5. Don't skim over these. Though they seem repetitive, they are like different perspectives on the whole theme of living according to God's plan:

My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

I don't know how they mined silver in Solomon's day. It was probably labor-intensive and dangerous. Today's silver industry digs deep into the earth for silver laden rock, which then goes through extensive processing to produce the metal in demand for (besides jewelry) electrical contacts and circuit boards, solar panels, electric vehicles, and 5G devices. See more at: Visualized: The silver mining journey from ore to more - MINING.COM

How does one “mine” the spiritual silver? By the deliberate, ages-old “technique” of reading, understanding, and applying the warnings and commands of scripture. In her book My Heart's Cry: Longing for More of Jesus (W Publishing, 2002, p. 128) Anne Graham Lotz (daughter of the late evangelist Billy Graham) shared her “mining” tips. Every morning, before her “day” gets going, she goes to a place in her home where she keeps her Bible, notebooks, devotionals and writing supplies. For the next hour she reads scripture, jots insights, and prays, seeking to apply to her life the principles she “mined” from her scripture reading.

In short, she adds one word to the title of this blog: Search, Find, APPLY.

The “apply” task is what's sorely missing in the word puzzles my grandson loves to solve. They may be fun, but the words are randomly placed. God's hidden treasure is extracted by prayer and a heart desiring to be—as Mrs. Lotz phrased it in the subtitle of her book--”longing for more of Jesus.”

Puzzle-impaired?

We have a collection of small-fry puzzles for when our grandsons, 2 and 3, come to visit. Some are super-simple, with pieces exactly cut to the holes. Others (like the Elmo one below) require a little more discernment about corners and edges.  People who have problems fitting together the pieces of faith remind me of the “Elmo” puzzle.  Believe it or not, the Bible agrees with that. No, there’s no furry red creature from Sesame Street in scriptures, but there’s a Greek word, suniemi, for “understand,” which means:  "the assembling of individual facts into an organized whole, as collecting the pieces of a puzzle and putting them together.” That insight was shared by teacher-author Beth Moore in her book on the life of Paul, To live is Christ (Broadman, 2001, p.  194) as she discussed Paul’s explanation of the prophecy in Isaiah 6:9-10:



Go to this people and say, ‘’You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.” (Acts 28:26)
Paul was trying to point out that when Jesus came, even as the prophecies came together in His life and ministry, the Jews were so calloused that they wouldn’t “get it.”  Even though the prophetic pieces “fit” in Him, they just kept ignoring corner and side pieces and saying it was “impossible” that He was the one for whom they’d waited so long.

PUZZLING THEOLOGIES
You’ve probably run into, as I have, people whose spiritual  understanding is so messed up that they basically invent a new (and puzzling)religion. They think faith in God should result in a painless, wonderful life. But history and the Bible emphasize that “peace with God” doesn’t always mean earthly peace.  I’ve had my share of difficulties, tears, and hurt. But I trusted God to keep me going forward to what He had planned.  We don’t always see a tidy conclusion in this life.  I just got an E-mail from a friend with an overseas ministry area.  It includes a country where a Christian husband and dad has already served nine years in prison just for witnessing about Jesus.  Given the hostility of that area’s government, he may die there.  And he’s just one of thousands (millions?) who are suffering for their faith. Moore observes:
When we continue to resist what God has for us, we may cripple our ability to understand how the pieces of our puzzle fit together. We will continually single out our experiences rather than understand them as parts of the whole...Although we will not understand everything until we see Christ face-to-face, God often blesses us by letting many things make sense during our lifetimes. (p.195)

PUZZLES TO GROW ON
At this point, my little grandson Josiah, 3 1/2, does not like the Elmo puzzle (though he is quite friendly with our collection of “Elmo” children’s books). His spatial development isn’t mature enough to work this level of puzzle. Someday, though, his puzzle-ability may come to the level of optical art or mosaic scenes that end up on a card table for several weeks of “solving.”

I want to believe that will be true of me, too.  I have a lot of “puzzle pieces” of hardship and difficult people that just don’t make sense right now. But I know God sees the bigger picture, and in His wise way, the true picture will, in the end, make sense.  Or, to put it another way, in Heaven there may be a Room of Puzzles, all completed, and all splendid because God designed them!