A Piece of the Kingdom

Ephesians 2:19-22

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One of the things my wife and I enjoy to do together is working on puzzles. We don’t do them all too often, but when we do, they are a challenge. Each piece has its own place in that puzzle, and sometimes as you’re working on the puzzle, it becomes so easy to just put piece after piece after piece without stopping. But other times, you get that one piece where you just can’t find where it goes. It doesn’t seem to fit in no matter where you put it. And so you get frustrated because you just can’t find it, and eventually you just have to walk away and come back again a different time.

As Christians, we look at the picture of the world and it has so many different pieces. But like that one puzzle piece, you just can’t seem to find where it goes, we sometimes struggle to see exactly how we fit in. We feel out of place in the world. We don’t believe as the world believes. We don’t think as the world thinks. We don’t want to live as the world lives. It seems as if we are in the puzzle box, but we just don’t fit in. Maybe we’re part of a totally different puzzle altogether. Jesus did say that. He said that we are in the world, but we are not of the world. And so where do we fit in? After all, every piece has its place in the puzzle, somewhere. The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter two, verses 19 through 22.

So then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household. You have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the Cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

This is who we are. Each one of us is a piece that makes up the puzzle of God’s kingdom and his family. God the father placed each and every one of us in that puzzle, when the Holy Spirit, through Word and Sacrament, worked faith in our hearts to know and trust that Jesus is our Savior. He has brought each one of us together, each individual piece, to form a beautiful picture of his church. This is where we fit in. When my wife and I finally find where those tough pieces put together in that puzzle, the pieces that we struggle with for so long, there is much rejoicing. Sometimes that even opens up more pieces to be put in that puzzle. After all, like those puzzle pieces, we aren’t all the same on the outside, but we are all pieces brought into God’s kingdom and his family. We rejoice knowing that this is where we belong. This is where we fit in. Amen.