The Missing Piece

    My daughters and I spread out the puzzle pieces and picked out the edges. After we had a nice edge, the middle filled in rapidly. To our dismay, we came up one piece short.

     “Did you girls see the missing piece anywhere?” I wondered.

     “No,” they answered together.

     “But I did pick some pieces off the floor yesterday,” Katie went on. “Maybe I missed a piece.”

     Together, Katie and I searched. Under the chair. Under the couch. Beneath the couch cushions. It wasn’t there. If anything annoys me, it’s a missing puzzle piece. It makes the puzzle worthless. Besides, the piece has to be somewhere! So we searched again. Still no puzzle piece.

     “Oh well,” I said. “It might turn up yet.”

     The next morning, my husband and I gathered our family together for devotions. Katie said her memory verse, and I opened the Bible. Out fell the missing puzzle piece! I held it up triumphantly, and Katie exclaimed, “The missing piece was in the Bible!”

     Yes, the missing piece was in the Bible.

     Often life’s puzzles, with their missing pieces, annoy me. I want to know what is missing in our child training. Why do we struggle with so much grumpiness and disobedience? I wonder what is missing in some of our relationships. Why would Christians have painful relationships? I want answers to life’s questions—and I want them now, please.

     And so I search. I ask my friends. I look through the books on our shelves. I read stories and articles. But how it must grieve God when I don’t search for the missing piece in His Word.

     I may look under the chair and beneath the cushions. This time, however, my missing piece was in the Bible.

-Emeline Lehman

Family Life, July 2014