Be Your Piece of the Puzzle

I'm limiting my time on social media these days. I love scrolling through and seeing all the feel-good stories, the puppies, the babies, and basically all the same things I love seeing even when we aren't in quarantine. But the barrage of theories and rants and opinion-slinging have gotten the best of me, and I usually have to stop my scrolling and close the pages. 

Sometimes for me, it's about the comparison game. I see posts from this church and that and catch a glimpse of what their ministries are doing, and I start to feel inferior about what I'm not doing with the ministries entrusted to me. I question whether or not we should be organizing more projects (safely, of course). I get frustrated when I see something I didn't think of...and it was so simple! 

Pretty soon all the comparisons pile up, and I just sit and stare - and that accomplishes nothing!

Maybe you've felt the same? 

But let me tell you the little lesson God impressed on my heart this weekend that has helped me reframe those feelings of frustration and comparison. 

It started when I received an email from someone I work with in women's ministry. I'd thanked her for giving me a chance to help her with a short assignment, and in her response, she said "I see and hear how you are influencing others, even during these tough times."

I read that sentence over and over. She did?? I confess I wondered who these "others" were that she observed me helping. And what was I doing?

Before I could come to any conclusions, I received another email - from one of you. (I won't name names in case she wants to stay anonymous.) 

But my emailing friend shared with me some specific things she'd done to encourage the people in her workplace, and she told me about some of the ideas she had pulled from posts she'd read here over time. 

As I read her words, my thoughts went back to that earlier email, and I realized they fit together perfectly. 

I may be stunted a bit in what I'm able to do through the normal course of my ministry avenues, but I can share ideas and lessons, and maybe those can ripple out through your lives. Maybe they can inspire you to think of things you can do in your corner of the world, and working together, we can try to encourage twice as many people as we could on our own.

I think that's pretty wonderful, don't you?

So my encouragement to you this Pandemic Tuesday is to not worry about all the things you're not thinking of doing. Don't worry about all the things you're not able to do (either logistically or emotionally.) Just be your piece of the puzzle. 

Every piece is important, you know.

There's a puzzle in the break room at Ryan's current work assignment, and on their breaks, the employees work on putting it together. When Ryan came home the other day, I asked how the puzzle was going, and he said, "I worked on the border and we're missing some pieces. It's maddening. The whole thing is a mess."

Every piece is important. Missing pieces make the puzzle incomplete. 

Be the piece of the puzzle you can be. Connect your offering with that of the person next to you, and eventually, there will be a beautiful picture of hope and encouragement reaching to the farthest borders. 

And you're part of it. A necessary part of it. Without you, it's incomplete. 

Be your piece of the puzzle.