I’ve always been interested in the idea that a multitude of individuals can perform their own distinct (and widely varying) jobs to the best of their ability, but someone over them (a manager, a coach, a superior officer, etc.) oversees and puts together those collective efforts to make something really big happen.
Some people take a different view. They think of themselves as running in the rat race. They don’t want to feel like they’re a cog in the wheel. If you derive your life’s purpose from an unfulfilling job, yeah, you’re going to feel like “just another brick in the wall,” as the old song goes.
But what if you derive meaning from God’s purpose for your life? If you do that, it’s a whole new ballgame. It’s often difficult to see in the moment, but as you look backward, you can see that things fell into place and coalesced in a way that helped you get to where God wanted you to be. Sometimes those things are the actions that other people are taking and other times it’s the way events seem to unfold. When it’s all said and done, a lot of things came together in a way that enabled your goal, your purpose, to go farther than it otherwise would have. It’s like you were part of a puzzle, and your piece and all the other pieces had to fall into place for the picture to be completed.
I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit here. When I was a kid I had lots of different books that I got from yard sales, thrift stores, hand-me-downs, etc. One of the books I had was a Flintstones book. I dug around online a little just now, and it was called “The Great Balloon Race.” I don’t remember much of the story, but as you turned the pages, in one of the upper corners of the page there was a picture of Fred juggling three balls. Each time you turned the page, something about that picture was slightly different, but it didn’t really become evident what was going on until you treated the whole thing like a flipbook. Starting at the beginning of the book, Fred walked onto the page and faced the reader. He tossed a ball into the air, then another, and then another. If I remember correctly, each of the balls made a few uneventful loops as Fred started to put on a show, but then he fumbled one of them. You could see his facial expression change as he realized his mistake. When he focused his attention on that particular ball, it made it difficult to keep track of those still remaining in the air. A second ball danced past his fingertips and fell toward the floor. You saw his eyes start to shift toward the last remaining ball in the air, but by now his rhythm was thrown way off, and he had to swipe at it to even get close. That action just ended up batting it off into the distance and out of reach. Left with nothing, he then looked at the reader, shrugged, and walked back off the page by the end of the book.
Our Christian lives are like flipbooks, but the metaphor goes a layer deeper. Just like before, each individual page of the flipbook is a puzzle, and you’re one piece among many. When you’re doing the will of God, your actions are fitting together with the actions of other believers. This flipbook was already in progress before you were born; one day you walked onto the scene, and there were other pieces that connected with you to form a single, larger picture. The pieces connecting with you may have been Sunday School teachers, a grandparent or parent, a friend, a pastor, or maybe someone you heard on the radio or TV. That particular picture may have also included a family or job situation, a specific time or place, or a set of circumstances that led to your acceptance of Christ. Those other pieces, who were themselves affected by other Christians earlier in the book, had an effect on you that grew you in your Christian walk.
Whether your Christian walk lasts for decades or for only a few minutes at the end of your life, you at one point walk onto the scene, and you’ll someday exit the scene. Each page that happens in between is its own puzzle that consists of numerous other “cogs in the wheel” that are doing what God has charged them to do. None of the individual cogs has insight into what the whole picture is shaping up to be or what kind of story the flipbook will tell, but they know that there’s a grand artist that’s in charge and is steering the path of where the story’s going. After all, when God called individual followers into their individual callings, He had their subsequent interactions already arranged in His mind. You do your part, other people do their parts, and God brings it all together.
Someday you’ll exit the flipbook altogether and it will continue without you. Your calling is meant to bring glory to the Lord, and many times that involves inspiring or somehow helping another “puzzle piece” to live out their Christian walk. Be watchful for opportunities to be a piece of another puzzle that’s a page in one of Christ’s flipbooks. One day you’ll be able to reconnect with all the other people that were involved in the same pictures you were, and you’ll be able to watch how the flipbook turned out.
Lord God, You are intimately involved not only with my life, but with the lives of everyone else on this planet. You’re in the process of telling a grand story, and right now, in this moment, we’re a part of the story for a limited time. Thank you for giving us opportunities to be part of the story; please help us to have the boldness and strength to accept Your invitations when they come. I ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
