Is There a Piece Missing In Your Life?

Jack Harris, an 86-year-old retired man in England, spent nearly eight years working on a five-foot long, 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It took up his dining room table all that time. When he thought the painstaking process was complete, he stood back to admire his work - only to find one piece missing.

He searched his home for the missing piece, but has not found it. He contacted the puzzle’s manufacturer to see if they could provide the missing piece, but they no longer make that jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle would never be completed.

As our church has looked at the life of Joseph this summer as an example of a person who lived with integrity and forgiveness, there is an interesting counterpoint to his story — Joseph’s brothers. They had a missing piece in their lives. In the last half of Joseph’s story, he attempted to help them recover that missing piece.

In order to understand the piece missing from his brothers’ lives, we need to know what motivated Joseph’s life. We first find this key to Joseph’s life after he is tempted by Potiphar’s wife and says he cannot “do such a wicked thing and sin against God.” Then Joseph is given the opportunity to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker and then of Pharaoh himself. In each case, he attributes God as the one who can interpret dreams. When he reveals himself to his brothers after years of separation, he tells them everything that happened to him was so God could save their lives. After their father, Jacob, dies, he reinforces that to his brothers. Joseph put God at the center of everything in his life.

In contrast, his brothers first think of God when they are in trouble. Returning home from buying food in Egypt, they find their money for buying the food is still in their sacks. Their response is to ask, “What is this that God has done to us?” For the first time, as far as we know, they acknowledge God because he had been missing in their lives for all those years.

So here is my question to you in this brief piece: Is God missing in your life? Or, do you put him in the center of everything that you do? Is he at the center of every decision you make? Do you talk about him to people you know? I am not asking whether you are a Christian, but whether you integrate God into every corner of your life. If not, he is the missing piece in your life — and an important one at that!