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When I was younger, my youngest brother Ellie — who today is grown up and lives in Lakewood — had a love for Lego and puzzles. Every kid has his thing. That was his thing.
He started with a 100 piece puzzle, then 150, then 200, then 500. I remember one time my mother really wanted to challenge him, so she bought him his first 1,000 piece puzzle. I think it was a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge. Nothing special. But puzzle makers know it’s not about the picture. It’s about the puzzle.
When she gave it to him his eyes lit up.
He turned to me and said, “Dovey, do you want to do this puzzle with me? It’s 1,000 pieces.”
As the older brother I had to play along.
“A thousand pieces? Are you sure you’re ready for that? That’s a big undertaking.”
He pushed his hair back and said, “I’m ready.”
So we sat down together. He turned over the box and 1,000 pieces went everywhere. I thought to myself, whoa.
I picked up one piece. It had green, blue, red. It was colorful. I thought this must be a central piece. It has so much color. Where does this go?
Meanwhile the puzzle maker himself was already on his 50th, 60th, 100th piece. Tick tick tick. He was putting them together quickly. I was still staring at this one piece trying to analyze it.
I said, “Ellie, look at this piece.”
He glanced at it and said, “Yeah,” and kept going.
“No, look at it. Look at the red, the green, the blue.”
He looked at me and said, “Are you here to do the puzzle or are you here to look at pieces?”
That line stayed with me.
Are you here to do the puzzle or are you here to look at pieces?
You can never take one single piece of a puzzle and expect to understand the whole picture. But little by little, piece by piece, the image begins to form.
In a short time he completed the entire 1,000 piece puzzle. I was left holding the last piece. I felt like a fool. What I thought was such a complicated piece, once I looked at the finished puzzle, it was obvious exactly where it fit. It completed the picture perfectly.
We placed the final piece in. No words were needed. It was magnificent.
This is what Hashem says to us.
Life is one piece at a time. I send you fragments of information. You cannot look at one piece and expect to understand it.
Says Borei Olam, My puzzle is not 1,000 pieces. It is thousands of years old. It began with Adam HaRishon. It continues through every generation until Mashiach and beyond.
And you want to take one piece of history, one moment, and judge the entire picture?
To understand one piece you would need to see the whole puzzle. Only in Olam HaEmet, when Hashem shows the full picture from beginning to end, will we understand how perfectly every piece fit. How much chesed. How much mercy.
Right now we are holding pieces.
Hashem is building the picture.