Encouragement

A MASTERPIECE

by Marilyn Meiners 
06/13/20
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I have always been a puzzle to everyone.  I guess that is just the nature of how I was created. 

It all began when I was just a little girl.   My mother would buy me beautiful dolls to play with.   Baby dolls.  Fancy dolls. Walking dolls.   She always said that every little girl should have a doll to play with.  Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against dolls.  I love them.   Still do.   But as a little girl I preferred paper-dolls to a baby doll.  I had boxes and boxes of paper-dolls, carefully cut out and categorized.   Whenever another little girl would come over to play, I’d get out my paper-dolls.   Sally, my best friend, would always say “Marilyn, I sure don’t understand your fascination with these paperdolls.   I prefer playing with a real live baby-doll.  These all look like one big puzzle to me that you have to put together.”   I would just smile and say, “Playing with these dolls are lots of fun.  You’ll see, and we can dress them faster than a baby doll too.” 

Sally would just sigh; a frustrated sigh I’m sure.

My mom thought her daughter strange.  Whenever she would ask me what dessert I wanted her to make for Sunday dinner it was always fresh apricot pie with chocolate ice-cream.   “Marilyn,” she’d say, “can’t you be normal like the rest of us and have vanilla ice-cream with your pie?”   

 “Nope,”  was my reply. 

It was chocolate or none.  

My High School cafeteria friends were always perplexed when I ordered a peanut-butter and dill pickle sandwich for my lunch.   It had to be dill pickles and no other.   Their comment was always “Yewww”.   My comment was “deliciouso”.  (My Spanish teacher would be proud!)   I still love PB and P sandwiches!

On my first date with my boyfriend Paul we went to the county fair.   Another teen-age couple we both knew joined us for the evening.    We had a fun-filled evening enjoying carnival rides, stage shows, farm animals and food!   Imagine the puzzled look on the face of Paul and our two friends when I ordered a hot-dog loaded with onions, relish, ketchup, mustard and sauerkraut.   They all said as one, “You put ketchup and mustard on your hot-dog?”   Paul looked at the hot-dog and said,  “That is gross.   Pick one or the other.”  

(Good way to win the heart of a guy you thought was super cute.) 

I looked at them with an amused expression.   “Guess you guys don’t like to be daring.  I bet if you tried it you would find you liked it.”   Years later, they ordered their hot-dog with all the trimmings, including ketchup and mustard.  Guess they have become a part of my puzzle.  

The only person to whom I am not a puzzle is my Heavenly Father who created me.   I was perfectly designed and put together, sinew-by-sinew, by my Father.  My eyebrows, my nose, my hazel eyes, my long fingers (they work well for my piano playing), my crooked toes.  Every part of this human puzzle God has perfectly pieced together and today I am the woman God planned for me to be.  

Ephesians 2:10 in the NLT tells me this.   “For we are God’s masterpiece.  He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the things he planned for us long ago.”   Think about this.   We, you and I, are a masterpiece.  A beautiful puzzle, put together by the loving hands of our Father, and  those hands have formed a masterpiece. 

A masterpiece is described as “a work of outstanding artistry.”    My Heavenly Father is a master artist.   And when he creates something, it is not a half-hearted effort on His part.   God makes no junk!  He has taken meticulous time and exercised his creativity to create this masterpiece called Marilyn.  

A puzzle to God I am not.   

I am perfect, created so I can do wonderful things for God that he had planned for me long ago.