I am always honored to host my friend and mentor Staci Stallings at my blog, but this post is especially close to my heart, as it features a fantastic Sunday School activity that will bless the teacher as thoroughly as it blesses the kids. Make sure you read all the way to the bottom for a fantastic free gift!
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For two years running one of the favorite Sunday School classes that I’ve taught has been Puzzle Day. I took a rather intricate 500 piece puzzle and divided it into 9 piece squares. The basic activity is rather easy. I give each student one bag with a 9-piece square of pieces that have not been put together. I tell them that the pieces represent a piece of their life, a collection of moments in their life. They are to put them together and then bring that piece to the center. Since I have the bags numbered, I know how the squares fit together so I can put the bigger puzzle together.
Many students who are very tactile learners love this lesson. Many who have been very quiet most of the year suddenly jump in, directing and helping with both their small square and the bigger puzzle now being put together. They also get into trying to figure out what the big puzzle is. They often help each other put pieces together when other students are having a tough time.
And something amazing begins to happen. Suddenly someone else having trouble begins to be a big deal. Why? Because them not getting their pieces together is affecting everyone’s puzzle!
The first time I taught this one, we had plenty of time and finished with time to spare. The second time I taught it, we only had about 7 kids, so each had to put many more squares together. They were in a near panic by the end because they wanted to see what the puzzle became. They were running to me, “Here’s another one! Where’s the next bag?”
A single, “I can’t get this!” would have four “helpers” immediately there to help the struggling student get that square together. And then the puzzle began to take shape, and the excitement grew even more intense. “I have that one!” “Oh, look! It’s Heaven!”
When the puzzle is all complete, it is a picture of Jesus, standing under a rainbow and a dove, hugging the person who has just entered Heaven.
And then I explain about the single missing piece. You see, when I put the puzzle together the first time, I lost one piece. After the whole puzzle was together, here was this empty space right under the rainbow in the clouds. We looked everywhere for that piece and finally gave up before we found it—under the completed puzzle!
So I explain what happens if someone decides not to join the puzzle. There is a piece that’s always missing. We talk about what happens if they are that piece, if they decide, “You know what? My piece really isn’t all that important. What I have to give or to contribute is not anything anyone is going to miss.”
For me, who has seen that puzzle put together three times now without that piece, I will tell you that one piece makes a HUGE difference in the way the puzzle looks. With it, you see Jesus. Without it, you see that big gaping space where something is just missing.
In life, we feel that missing piece in our souls and in our hearts even if we can’t quite articulate it. I don’t have time in class to go through this, but I feel it most when I’m not true to myself and what the Holy Spirit is asking me to do. When He whispers something in my heart, and I come up with a gazillion reasons why I can’t do it. When I talk myself out of His plan for me, I feel that missing piece the most.
And I hear it in other people’s voices. When they want to but don’t know if they should, when they have a gift but refuse to give it because “what difference will it make anyway?” When their spirit says “go for it” and their head says “I must be crazy to try.” That missing piece is so very evident.
After the class with the puzzle, I bring it back in once again broken up, and we talk about it. The last time I took a 9-piece square and gave it to one boy named Trent. I said, “Now, Trent can just put this together any way he wants, right?” I proceeded to “put the puzzle together” but instead of right, I just jammed pieces together, “making them fit.”
His eyebrows shot up. “No, you can’t do that.” Why not? “Because it doesn’t go like that.” So? Who cares? They’re your pieces. You can do whatever you want with them.
At this point the rest of the class begins to chime in indignantly, “No, that’s not right.” Why? “Because if he messes up his pieces, it messes up the whole puzzle!” Oh, so that means if he’s not living the life God sent him here to live, it doesn’t just affect him, but it affects everybody’s puzzle?
What a concept!
So your life doesn’t just affect YOU. It affects everybody else’s too?
I submit that if you are withholding your pieces or if you are just jamming them together any old way—if you are not letting the Holy Spirit put your pieces together the way they were meant to be put together—you will be in misery. You will feel the void but not understand it. You will try to force life to be one way when the Holy Spirit knows how it was meant to be put together.
There are several “lessons” from this one…
1) What you do (how you put your pieces together) is very important to the overall puzzle. In short, what you do matters.
2) If you decide to withhold a piece (or your whole self), the void is felt if not fully understood.
3) Helping others learn to put their pieces together is as important as putting your own pieces together. Even if only 2 students out of 7 had just given up on their pieces and not gotten help, those 2 would have made the whole puzzle incomplete.
4) Amazing how when someone offered help, how that encouraged the frustrated student to try again. Great lesson for all of us on the power of encouragement.
The puzzle is one of the best lessons the Holy Spirit has shown me.
Copyright Staci Stallings 2008
Copyright Staci Stallings 2008
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