Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

• 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

I know this may sound trivial, but last Thursday, I talked about working on a jigsaw puzzle.  I was convinced that I had missing pieces, until I realized that the “missing piece” was placed into the puzzle in the wrong place.  And I had done that multiple times.

Don’t you just love these modern puzzles where a piece can fit in multiple places?  And when hundreds of pieces are all white, you cannot tell until the surrounding pieces do not fit.

As it turned out, I might have had a dozen pieces in the wrong places.  I lost count.

But the reason that I came back to the subject is that I thought the puzzle would take about five days.  When I saw the lack of distinguishing marks – as if the puzzle was of a blizzard – I doubled that idea.  I finished on day fourteen.

But the oddest thing happened, I actually had a missing puzzle piece in the white area.

Once I completed the puzzle, with one missing piece, I looked underneath the kitchen table.  There was a box with my size eleven wooden shoes (American sizing – I think they were size 46 European).  I had used the wooden shoes as a centerpiece.  I pulled out the shoes, and it seemed nothing had fallen in the box, but there was some white lace that I had placed the wooden shoes on when using the shoes as a centerpiece.  When I lifted the lace from the box, I heard the typical sound of a puzzle piece hitting the floor.  It was the missing piece.

But the strange thing was that for the piece to fall from where I was working into the box, the piece would have to roll down my leg, bounce off another dining table chair and then into the box.  The area where I was working was perfectly clean for the purpose of finding a dropped puzzle piece.

Note: A Dropped puzzle piece is not a missing puzzle piece until it quits rolling.

That’s a paraphrase of what Mark Twain had said about sportsmanship.

“It’s good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.”

• Mark Twain

But when day five came up and the puzzle was a few carol song books and a bird in a nest, I could have accepted defeat.  When day ten came and went, I was frustrated with “missing pieces” when there was only one piece that really was “missing” at the time.  And on the day when I finished the puzzle, I had taught Sunday school, went to church and partook in communion, did some light grocery shopping, wrote one very lengthy post and two other shorter posts, and as a relaxation between accomplishments, I finished the puzzle, and then found the missing piece.

And with all of my weakness days lately, this day was all on God’s strength.

If a task is worth doing, and maybe a jigsaw puzzle does not count for that attribute, we need to see the task through.

Especially when you are doing something for God’s glory, see it through to the finish line.  And acknowledge that God gave you the strength to do so.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.