Child in the Mist

 

"Life in a bag."

Finding the Box Top

Puzzle Pieces

Perhaps your family was like mine and worked jigsaw puzzles during the Christmas holidays. Ours always seemed to be a thousand-piece puzzle spread across a card table in the corner of the room. We would dump the pieces onto the table and let the fun begin. Conversations flowed, stories were shared, and life happened as we searched for the picture slowly emerging from the chaos.

The first task was always turning every piece face up. I have to confess—I always cheated. I looked for the border pieces first. Straight edges were much easier to find than half of a skater's face. Once the border was complete, we began searching for the recognizable parts of the picture, each piece bringing the image into clearer focus.

The Missing Box Top

There was, however, one piece of the puzzle that was more important than all the others—the box top.

Can you imagine trying to complete a thousand-piece puzzle without ever seeing the picture? There would be little joy in randomly fitting pieces together. The box top gives every piece its context. It tells you what you're looking for. It transforms scattered fragments into a meaningful image.

The laughter, the friendly competition, and the excitement all come from knowing what you're trying to discover. Someone finds another piece of the frozen pond, someone else discovers the skater's red scarf, and little by little the picture comes alive.

But what if there were no box top? What if the puzzle pieces had simply been poured from a plain brown paper bag?

Or worse yet, what if someone handed you the wrong box top? Imagine trying to build a winter village while the pieces in front of you actually belonged to a mountain landscape. You might spend hours trying to force pieces together that were never meant to fit.

Perhaps an older family member would assure you, "I know how this puzzle goes together," and proceed to describe a picture that didn't match the pieces before you.

Looking back, that describes much of the first half of my life.

Life doesn't come with a box top.

In fact, we don't even begin with all the pieces. We simply inherit a handful of them while surrounded by plenty of people who confidently tell us they know what the finished picture looks like. Along the way, there are moments of great joy when something resonates deep within us and another piece falls into place. Even better are those moments when scattered pieces suddenly begin fitting together, and for the first time we begin to glimpse a larger picture.

My Story

Perhaps a little more of my story will explain what I mean.

My father was a Methodist. My mother was a Baptist. I was baptized as an infant in a Presbyterian church—go figure—and one named Trinity at that. Looking back, baptism would become one of the great road maps of my spiritual journey.

I spent my childhood among what we affectionately called the "frozen chosen," faithfully collecting perfect-attendance pins along the way.

When I turned twelve, it was time for confirmation. We memorized the Westminster Catechism and appeared before the elders to answer questions about its contents. Much of my later theological demise may have begun because my mother, exhausted after helping my two older brothers memorize the larger catechism, settled for teaching me only the shorter one. My brothers both became Presbyterian ministers. Then there was me.

I walked the aisle, received a Bible with my name engraved in gold, and officially confirmed my baptism.

The deal was done.

The problem was that none of it connected me to the God those doctrines described.

I had been told that God had chosen and elected me, yet He remained almost entirely unknown to me in any personal way. My image of God resembled Zeus—an old man with a white beard seated upon a distant throne of judgment.

My understanding of the Trinity never progressed much beyond the old illustration of water existing as liquid, steam, and ice. It was an attempt to explain God, but it left me with a formula rather than a relationship.

That picture offered little help as I entered my teenage years filled with alcohol, drugs, and girls. Truthfully, it wasn't difficult to walk away from that God because I had never really known Him in the first place.

My Many Baptisms

I was twenty years old before I first heard an evangelical message about being "born again."

Ironically, it happened at a swimming pool.

A young hippie with a guitar sang, preached, and invited me into what became baptism number two—a believer's baptism.

With it came an entirely new box top.

The puzzle pieces looked familiar, but the picture had changed dramatically. Instead of a distant God, I now met an angry God who demanded my fear and obedience.

Soon afterward came two more baptisms. The charismatic movement introduced me to the baptism in the Holy Spirit and a baptism of repentance. I was told these experiences had not occurred either with the hippie in the swimming pool or with the Presbyterian elders standing beside the baptismal font.

Looking back, I find myself grateful for every one of those experiences. They all became roads on my journey. Each one handed me additional puzzle pieces. But each also gave me a different picture of God.

By my late twenties I had been sprinkled, poured, and dunked.

I liked to joke that I'd been spot-cleaned, wet-cleaned, and dry-cleaned.

No disrespect is intended. Every one of those baptisms represented an honest attempt to connect with a God I had never truly met face to face.

The Questions

Let me skip ahead about twelve years.

I was now in my early forties. I had left vocational ministry and returned to painting signs full time.

The previous years had been devastating.

Wendy and I had endured the full-term stillbirth of our son Nathan, followed by an early miscarriage, and eventually the birth of our beautiful fourth child.

To put it simply, I no longer knew who God was.

For that matter, I wasn't sure who I was.

I believed God existed because I had gathered enough puzzle pieces to convince me of that much. But I no longer knew what picture those pieces were supposed to create.

My deepest prayer became remarkably simple:

"Can we start over?"

Several former pastors, including myself, had begun meeting together in homes. We were asking whether we should plant yet another church.

One Sunday morning our discussion was open to everyone. As usual, I stood up and spoke about what I was thinking.

“If I were to know God. I would have to know who God was before Time.” 

I admitted that I no longer possessed many answers.

But I had become convinced that the answers had to begin before Genesis 1:1.

Everything depended upon who the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were before creation itself.

Who are They?

Why did They create?

What kind of world would naturally flow from Their character?

What destination did They have in mind from the very beginning?

Those became the questions that would reshape my life.

The Paradigm Shift

After the meeting I wandered into the kitchen to get something to eat.

A man I had never met approached me.

He smiled and said, "I don't meet many people who ask those kinds of questions."

His name was Baxter Kruger.

As it turned out, Baxter lived in my hometown and was writing a book called The Great Dance exploring those very questions.

It was one of those moments that can only be described as a divine appointment.

Over the years Baxter became both a friend and a teacher. Through his remarkable gift for language he painted a completely different box top.

For the first time, the Trinity was no longer an abstract doctrine to explain but the living fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—the eternal dance of love into which humanity had been welcomed.

Suddenly the scattered puzzle pieces of my life began fitting together.

I was no longer simply learning facts about God.

I was meeting my Father.

Meeting the Father

Life did not suddenly become easy.

Far from it.

But I finally had a foundation strong enough to trust.

God was no longer distant.

He was present.

I was no longer alone.

The realization that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had already included me within Their life changed everything.

It was no longer all up to me.

They had done for me, to me, and in me what I could never accomplish for myself.

That became the new context in which I understood every other piece of the puzzle.

Baxter and I have now enjoyed a wonderful love-hate relationship for more than three decades.

I owe him a debt I can never repay.

As I often tell him, I have his boot prints all over my body, soul, and spirit.

It would be impossible to measure his influence on my life.

Like C. S. Lewis said of George MacDonald, "I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him."

Baxter introduced me to MacDonald, and between the two of them, their fingerprints are woven throughout everything I now write.

My Final Baptism

Because of what Baxter helped me see, I discovered one final baptism.

It took place two thousand years ago in the muddy waters of the Jordan River.

Jesus entered those waters not because He needed repentance, faith, forgiveness, or the Holy Spirit.

I did.

Standing with His Father and the Holy Spirit, Jesus entered my humanity and fulfilled all righteousness in my place and in my name.

His baptism became my baptism.

He did for me, to me, and in me what I could never have done for myself.

Today my confidence no longer rests in my faithfulness, my repentance, or my spiritual accomplishments.

It rests entirely in His.

As Paul declared,

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." — Galatians 2:20 (KJV)

That is the box top by which every piece of my life now finds its place.

I can say with Paul, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 KJV