When the Pieces Don't Fit: Making Sense of the Puzzle of Faith - Tapa blanda

Karen Mason has an MA in Old Testament and a PhD in Counseling Psychology and is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Counseling at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. She and her husband, Paul, have two grown children.

Does faith sometimes seem like a puzzle to you ?

Some say that faith requires simple trust; others insist that it involves work. Who is right? And how can we know?

When the Pieces Don’t Fit will help you understand that your perceptions are not always God’s reality. The picture God is creating is bigger and more complex than the few puzzle pieces you have in your hands.

We want faith to be simple and straightforward. We want clear answers. We want right and wrong to be either one thing or another. Is it better to turn the other cheek or to stand up against bigotry and injustice? How can you love others and yourself? How can you be wonderfully made yet sinful from birth? Is it safe to assume that all mental distress is spiritual in nature or can it also be a physical condition?

To avoid the distress and misunderstanding of this kind of “either-or” thinking, we need to open our eyes to see a God who is bigger than our limited perceptions, who deals in a “both-and” universe where seeming opposites can both be true under certain circumstances.

To see how this works, we need spiritual vision. We need eyes of faith that see past the perplexities of day-to-day troubles to the greater glory that awaits those who seek God with all their hearts and who resist the temptation to trust their own understanding.

When the Pieces Don’t Fit offers you a perspective that allows you to see beyond your circumstances.