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Coffee And... The Foolishness of God
by Louise Bergmann DuMont (Louise's bio)
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Life reminds me a lot of a jigsaw puzzle… and I love jigsaw puzzles almost as much as I love coffee. When you first take a puzzle out of its box you find yourself staring at hundreds of little misshapen bits of cardboard. Each fragment contains a seemingly irrelevant concoction of colors and shapes. The task before you is daunting. Should you start with dazzling crimson ones or those with the mottled blue specks?
Jigsaw enthusiasts like myself, usually start with the "edge" pieces. We pick through the box bit by bit and set apart any piece that has a straight side. Then we sort those possible side pieces into color categories and begin the task of locating which belong together. Eventually the border takes shape and with it, an idea of where the colors began and end.
I think God wants us to build our lives this way. When we are young all we see are disconnected pieces. When I first met my husband I knew that he was the most wonderful boy I'd ever met. He was funny, smart, handsome, athletic, and to my sheer delight, he was a musician in a rock band. He was headed toward college, I toward the world of work. These were the first elements of our puzzle. They reflected a wondrous array of colors, shapes and patterns but I had no idea how they would fit together in the grand scheme of my life. After high school John and I started to get serious. The border of our lives began to form and I saw patterns emerge. It wasn't until many years later that enough pieces were in place to allow images to surface. The images were based on things my husband and I put into our lives – bits of the puzzle we put together. A number of very bright pieces fell into place as we married, had our three sons and I rededicated my life to Christ. Fifteen years into our marriage another brilliant section emerged as my husband also gave his life to Jesus and began serving Christ. Millions of small events filled the space in between. Some of them were difficult to place. I knew they were a part of our puzzle, I just could not seem to fit them in at first. There were dark pieces that I wished I could ignore, but they were a part of the puzzle too. Without them I could not connect the bright pieces. When I finally inserted those sinister fragments I stepped back to look at the picture that was forming. Oddly the colorful sections were all the more obvious now that they lay next to the dark ones.
The more pieces I connect to our puzzle the more I realize that God has an incredible plan for our lives. He gives us each the pieces we need but it is up to us to put them together. When we refuse to accept parts we don't like or look for pieces that should not be a part of our puzzle, we can't finish the beautiful picture God has planned.
My coffee cup is almost empty as I put the last piece of my puzzle in its place. My life puzzle still has a lot of missing pieces though. As I get older it gets easier to see where things fit and I'm less reluctant to put in the dark pieces. God is good and I know He has a wonderful plan.
"Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men."
1 Corinthians 1:25
Copyright 2002, Louise Bergmann DuMont. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission.
| About Louise Bergmann DuMont: Louise Bergmann DuMont is the facilitator of the North Jersey Christian Writer's Group and a recent winner of CWG's 2001 conference scholarship. She has written for numerous local periodicals, journals and newspapers and recently began expanding her horizons to include more widely circulated publications. Louise's interests include gifted/learning-disabled children and fiction/fantasy writing. She is married and has three sons. E-mail Louise |
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