This week I met with a former pastor who gave me this description of his current situation: “My life is a puzzle box – all the pieces are there but the picture on the front has been torn off. I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like.”
His income has gone up dramatically in the last couple of years allowing him to tithe more than his entire income seven years ago.
But financial success does not remove the questions about proper direction. Faster, bigger and more are sometimes just that – faster, bigger and more. Ultimately we want to see that picture of our life – a completed whole.
If I try to do something noble, humanitarian or Godly that has nothing to do with who I really am, I may look good to others and to myself for a period of time. But the fact that I am not being authentic will eventually have consequences. I may end up doing more damage than if I had not attempted this particular area of “success.” Trappist monk Thomas Merton addressed this when he said, “There is in all visible things….a hidden wholeness.”
We’re all looking for that completed picture on the front of our puzzle box – our “hidden wholeness.” Don’t be content until yours comes into view.
Dan Miller's Blog 
August 6, 2010 at 1:34 am
If you are doing something on the surface that is noble are you helping or hurting the world? By doing something that is not your passion you are keeping the greatness you could be from the world.
Josh Bulloc
Kansas City, MO
August 6, 2010 at 6:18 am
Was it not John the Baptist that used the term “brood of vipers” for the disingenuous Pharisees & Sadducees who prayed aloud to be seen by men? Lord help us to be authentic with ourselves and with others.
Thanks for the great post, Dan!
August 6, 2010 at 11:54 am
Yeah, I got out of my old job because I didn’t feel ethical in that we were charging them for services we would never provide. I just couldn’t face negotiations with the Gov’t when I knew the truth.
It was hard to leave, but thank God he provided another job in editing, which is a dream come true for me and another step closer to being a writer!
nicodemusatnite.blogspot.com
August 6, 2010 at 7:09 pm
perhaps though our wholeness will never come into view in this life. is that not what heaven is?
the more appropriate question might be, how can we continue to pursue our wholeness with the understanding that we may never actually see/obtain it in this life?
-dan
June 7, 2013 at 2:01 am
Your article My life is a puzzle box | Dan Miller’s Blog write very well, thank you share!
November 1, 2014 at 4:43 pm
Traditional Japanese Trick opening puzzle boxes as we know them were first made in the Hakone region from about 1870’s by master woodworker Ryugoro Okawa.
Japanische Puzzlebox