The God Of Peace Is The God Of Our Pieces

​My life is in pieces.

Pieces that look like childhood trauma, addictions, divorce, depression, loneliness, trying to make ends meet...

But before you get too worried about me, let me add - your life is in pieces too. Maybe the pieces are different, and maybe your puzzle is a little bit more complete than mine, but my guess is you wrestle with your pieces as much as I wrestle with mine.

We rarely focus on the part of the puzzle that's complete; most of us wrestle with and obsess over the pieces that seem lost or yet without a place.

I should also mention that I have a few other pieces to my life. Pieces that look like healing and resilience and hope.

There's a story in the bible. The disciples are out in a boat and a storm comes roaring up from the lake. The disciples fear for their lives. Then, in the middle of the storm, Jesus walks by them, on the water. He was actually about to pass right them by.

The disciples didn't remotely recognize him, so they cried out, terrified, they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Then Jesus stopped and climbed into the boat with them. The storm immediately calmed down. And the bible tells us that the disciples were amazed. The bible adds that they were amazed because they had not understood the loaves.

Amazed because they had not understood the loaves? What?

Just before the disciples had taken the boat out on the lake, Jesus fed over 5000 starving people with just a few pieces of bread and a couple of pieces of fish. Not only did he feed them all, there were plenty of leftovers for the disciples to take with them on the boat.

The disciples literally had reminders in baskets sitting next to them in the boat of the miracle they'd just witnessed Jesus perform when feeding the thousands.

And yet, they were still amazed that Jesus could quiet a thunderstorm.

Steven Furtick says that the God of Peace is found in the God of Pieces. He suggests that our broken pieces often rob us of peace because we lose sight of all that God has previously done with our broken pieces along the way.

And all that he has done with broken pieces throughout the course of creation.

Are our pieces signs of brokenness or signs that God is about to build something? Are our pieces signs that there isn't enough to eat, or that there is about to be leftovers?

Most of the work I do these days, most of what I write and teach about, could be summed up as God making something whole of pieces I was sure were not just useless to my life, but worse, they were destructive to the possibility of me EVER being anything close to WHOLE in this life.

Maybe this idea of finding piece in wholeness is overrated. Maybe peace is actually found in the knowing that the pieces that often rob us of peace are going to be the pieces that one day feel like leftovers.

Pieces that will one day feel like peace that surpasses all understanding.

My life is in pieces. It always has been.

But these days, at least most days, my life feels full of peace.

I am not amazed by that. I know what Jesus did with those sparse and broken pieces of bread and fish.

I know what Jesus has done with the sparse and broken pieces of me.

The God of Peace is not found when the puzzle is finally put together. The God of Peace is found in the pieces still looking for their place.