Thought for the Week: 'Life is a bit of a puzzle, isn't it?'

Rev Ian Dickie, Brisbane Evangelical Church

I was sharing with the church a wee while ago the old story my dad told me which was one of the many puzzles that he liked to challenge us with when we were young. It is the old story of a cowboy who rode into town on Friday and stayed for three nights and left on Friday. How is that possible?

My younger brother got his revenge on my dad by posing him this one. It drove my dad mad that he couldn’t work out the puzzle. ‘I have two coins in my hand amounting to 55p and before you think it’s too easy one of them isn’t a 5 pence piece”.

Life is like a bit of a puzzle isn’t it. We don’t often know why things happen or why things happen to me and not the next person. We get puzzled and even distressed over so many things we see and hear about that go on in our communities and our world.

We don’t understand so often. I remember a guy in my previous church who had suffered for many, many years with MS, and I always remember his positive attitude and he would often say about his own situation and many others that he would take it and file it away as something he didn’t understand and he would open the file when he went to be the Lord and ask Him to explain it to him. He passed away just recently and I’m sure he did just that.

I always think of the verse in the Bible where Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” God is the beginning and the end and although we often don’t understand he is in control of the middle bit as well.

We don’t always get it. As a Christian, I don’t always get it, but what I do get and trust is God’s love and care for me and for all humankind, demonstrated in so many ways and ultimately and amazingly at the cross.

If you didn’t know the answers to the puzzles at the beginning. Firstly, the cowboy’s horse was called Friday. Secondly, the coins were a 50p piece and a 5p piece. He only said one of them wasn’t a 5p piece.