A Piece of The Puzzle

It's the official end of the first week of discipleship training school (DTS). The general consensus is that it has felt like we've been here for many weeks already. Not only because the days have been long and jam packed with events, but because of the pace that friendships have already grown. One day you are learning what everyone's name is and the next you are sharing your darkest struggles. That's the thing about community living, you can only hide who you really are for sooo long. My classmates see each other at our most vulnerable, weakest and challenging moments. Transparency is inevitable here. It's something that I personally struggle with. I am naturally introverted and have grown comfortable with the walls I've built up around me. One thing God has really shown me is that: there is no room for pride in the kingdom of God.

We got to hear from the founders of this base about how YWAM Ships came to be. The week was filled with incredible stories of how God performed miracle after miracle to fulfill what He had promised. His Word never fails. The common thing that really struck me was that God kept moving in the individual to present the big picture. In lecture, they talked about how God works in us as a group like a jigsaw puzzle. Everyone gets a piece of information that might not make sense initially until you place it all together with the rest of the body of Christ. That's why community is so important, why YOU are so important. They handed us each a puzzle piece... mine was this unimpressive shade of brown. I didn't think much of it until I saw the picture that each piece was a part of. It was this cozy village on the sea side with the sun setting over the ocean. My piece was no longer merely this plain shade of brown but a perfect tone of sea shore tan. Imagine if I had thrown away my piece because I considered it worthless and ugly? Imagine working so hard to do a thousand piece puzzle only to find that one piece is missing? It'd ruin the entire picture!

I have been reading through 1 Corinthians since before I came here and only God could perfectly time that I would reach chapter twelve right at this moment. "Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ... But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?" 1Cor 12:12 ;18

The LORD has created us all with our uniqueness for a reason and for a purpose. The world has distorted this uniqueness in individuals throughout the years by calling those who stand out "weird", "strange" or that they "don't fit in." But what if it wasn't our original design to copy each other as clones do but rather to use our gifts to reflect the depth and vastness of one eternal God?