by Macy Johnson
“A time to search and a time to give
up,
a time to keep and a time to throw
away.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:6 NIV)
Life is
like a puzzle tray. We come across things to do or create from our experiences,
then toss them into a tray, a schedule of sorts. Once all the pieces for a
project are collected, we gather them from the mental trays and form a picture,
a plan to complete the task.
Often we have to search our minds for the best next thing. Sometimes we possessed the item already, but it slipped away.
Jeff’s favorite, expensive clippers were lost.
The last time he remembered using them was when pruning a plant in the front
yard. After hours or searching, he gave up. Later in the day while raking in a
flower bed, the clippers magically appeared from under a pile of leaves.
Some people
organize puzzle pieces by color, like the Goodwill store’s layout. I like to arrange
them by items in the picture: a house, the water, groups of people, etc. I used
to separate pieces by the grid sections of the puzzle, allocating them evenly.
Puzzle
trays can be like chapters of a book. I gathered information from a 2007
interview with my aunt. After tossing facts around for weeks, I decided to categorize
them by person and tossed facts into unique family chapters.
After not
playing Bridge for over a year, my friends are back together for our weekly fun
time. During the pandemic, we experienced a time to give up, to let our desires
go, our relationships go, but we held on to hopes of gathering again. Yesterday
we played bridge in person again for the first time!
I will strive
to put my plans into appropriate mental trays according to my heavenly Father’s
perfect will. I hope you will, too!