Incomplete

Have you ever spent hours working on a jigsaw puzzle & everything seems to be going great, when all of a sudden, you can't find the last piece to finish the puzzle!  You look in the floor, under your chair, & turn the house upside down, but still can't find it!  It can be the most aggravating thing!  We have a Christmas family tradition at our house where we pull the same Christmas puzzle off the shelf, divide up into two teams & each team is timed on how long it takes them to put it together.  The winning team gets to proudly write their name, date, & time on the inside of the box!  Needless to say, over the past 8 years, my name has never graced the inside of the box!  I remember one Christmas when my son & I were winning by 4 minutes & I was already "shooting off my mouth" to my wife & son that Dad was finally going to win!  Little did I know that when it was our turn to put the puzzle together, I had knocked a puzzle piece across the room & when it got down to puting that last piece in we ran out of time because we couldn't find it!  Yes I protested, complained, griped, & said it wasn't fair!  But then those words came out of my wife's mouth; "Alan, it's incomplete".  They won & I lost again.  This reminds me of how "Incomplete" we are without God.  We can try to fill our lives & soul with everything to make us happy, but without GOD in our lives we are "incomplete".  As a philosopher has said, "there is a God-shaped emptiness each of us & only God can fill it."  And that's the thought for the week from a "42 year old youth minister".