It's a Puzzle: A 10-Day Devotional About... LifeSample

Day 2: The Missing Piece (Is Love)

My mother volunteers once a week at a local thrift store that uses the sale of donated items to purchase and distribute Bibles. She spends much of her time there inspecting goods to ensure they’re worth selling. One item they seem to receive often is jigsaw puzzles. Mom will take them home and, when she has some spare time, put the puzzles together to see if all the pieces are in the box. And if there’s just one piece missing, it’s off to the trash bin for that puzzle because who wants to put all that time and energy into something that will always feel incomplete?

My friend Mark was the first person I knew who said, “Everyone is born with a God-shaped hole in their heart.”

Yes. You, me... we all have a missing piece from our “puzzle” (life).

1 John 2:15-17 (New Living Translation) explains how nothing else in this world will fill that hole; no other piece will fit:

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

One evening, over 2000 years ago, while speaking with Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, Jesus explained how God loves the people of the world so much He gave you and me the Ultimate free Gift – the missing piece of the “puzzle” – Jesus (Himself):

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. (John 3:16-18, The Message)

Today, you are also being offered the missing piece of your puzzle. And as with all great gifts, it costs you, the receiver, nothing to accept it, while it costs the giver something, and in this case, it cost the Giver His life. All you have to do is say thank you and accept it.

You have the choice.

One day you, me, and everyone who ever lived... will have to stand before God and hear Him ask each of us: I gave you My One, My Only Son, Jesus, the Perfect Gift. What did you do with that Gift?

How will you respond to that question?