Super bowl Sunday– a day set aside for friends and family to come together – eat junk food, scream at the players on the field (as if they can actually hear you), and debate over either the players, coaches, (or my favorite) the officials performance. This most recent Super-bowl I greeted my friend Bob and his wife at the door. It was there he took off his coat, and prior to hanging it up took out a Rubiks Cube. Just one look at it and my mind began to be filled with memories of Junior High – smuggling my Cube into science class and attempting to solve it while hiding it under my desk out of sight from Mr. Woods. I was sidetracked during the game. After all, this was the super-bowl, and it demanded my attention, however, my eyes kept being dragged, as if by a force-field back to Bob sitting on the couch next to me who was causally watching the game while attempting to solve the puzzle within his hands. By half time I could stand it no longer. I went into my office and began rummaging thru boxes I had stored in the closet. Finally I found it – the Rubiks Cube of my youth! Immediately I found myself turning and twisting on the cube. It still moved smoothly and seamlessly from position to position (my brother and I used to take them apart and coat the inner workings with Vaseline to make is slide from position to position).
However, there was a problem.  The cube didn’t look like I remembered it.  In fact several of the colored stickers were missing revealing several misplaced black squares throughout the puzzle.  In addition, many of the remaining stickers were barely hanging on.  Stickers were sideways – edges were lifted.  It was then that I remembered the struggles of a desperate youth – time locked behind closed doors removing sticker and rearranging them so it would appear that I had at least “solved” one side of the puzzle.
 
Life is much like this puzzle isn’t it?  After all, the Bible clearly tells us what our life will look like when the puzzle is finally complete, but until then we are in process.  As we yield to God, we can feel him leading us thru the process – step by step, one move at a time causing the “random” in our life to slowly become a beautiful “portrait.”
 
Again there is a problem: impatience!  We want the puzzle solved now! We may have a void in our life that God is in the process of working on, however there are steps that He may need to take prior to placing the missing piece in its home.  So we get frustrated and attempt to solve the puzzle on our own.  Maybe we hunger for closeness in relationships, so we cross the line when it comes to intimacy in our pursuit.  Or is it that we hunger to laugh again in the midst of life’s pain, so we turn to our drug of choice to force out the pain.  Here is the problem, when we try to go outside “the rules” and solve the puzzle on our own, its as if we are talking the stickers off of  “Life’s Cube” and rearranging them – sticking them back on so that it would appear the void I once was experiencing is now filled.  After all, look at this – this side of my cube is now solved!  It looks amazing!
 
Here is the problem.  My cube – the one I took out of my box – has problems.  I realized after several hours of attempting to solve the puzzle, that I can never be solved!  I had broken the rules misplaced the stickers and by the laws of simple physics – as the stickers were – the puzzle could never be solved.
 
I have a friend who is a flies airplanes.  Over lunch recently he began sharing with me a dilemma that he was facing.  His boss had recently approached him and had asked him to lie about his flight log.  His boss wanted him to report that he had actually flown more hours than he had.  This owner of the planes reasoning was simple:  The more hours a pilot has, the cheaper the insurance on the plane is.  In addition it would allow the pilot to demand a higher wage.  This would mean more money for my friend!  His dilemma – integrity.
 
Let me explain it this way.  Remember I had described those loose stickers on my cube?  They had been moved around so many times, that now they barely had any strength to hold on.  Integrity is the same way.  Those decisions that you make when no one is looking really do affect your life.  Start bending the rules, and soon you will find that your life has become robbed of its strength.  Compromise shouts out to us – “I’m the solution that you have been looking for to complete Life’s Puzzle!”  In reality, compromise isn’t the solution to the puzzle – it’s the opposite!  It would be like cutting out the eyes on the Mona Lisa.  Just as this beautiful tapestry would be incomplete, so it is with our lives.  I hear a quote one time and I wrote it down: “Integrity – if you have it, it’s al that matters.  If you don’t have it – it’s all that matters.”
 
You’re smart – you know where I’m going with this.  Maybe you have been guilty, as even I have been, of breaking the rules in life – rearranging the stickers, and now are feeling the frustration because life’s “puzzle” just doesn’t work.  Maybe you are feeling the “void” left in your life cause by bad decisions. Let me challenge you to just be real with God.  Share with Him your joys and sorrows. Come clean with Him.  Let your prayer be like that of King David when he asked God to “create within me a clean heart.” Create in my life – this puzzle - a new start – rearranging the confusion – replacing he voids.  Then I encourage you to yield to the Masters hand upon your “Life’s Puzzle.”  
 
Watching Bob solve that puzzle brought me back to the emotions I felt in Jr. High.  Some of the moves he did made sense.  Others seemed to baffle me.  It almost appeared as if he as was ruining a portion he had just solved in an attempt to align yet a different side of the puzzle.  It didn’t make sense at first, but then with a twist and a turn – the puzzle was complete – an object of beauty!
 
Integrity: “If you have it, it’s all that matters. If you don’t have it, it’s all that matters!” Shop Talk- “a safe place to hang out - get your hands dirty - tear apart, and rebuild.” March’s Talk: “Life’s Puzzle Back to the Shop