One Piece at a Time

This past Sunday, my husband sat down to build his LEGO Leonardo da Vinci’s Flying Machine he had received for Christmas. Almost five hundred pieces were spread across the table in sections in front of him as he sat on the couch. Some were no bigger than 1/8″, others larger.

As he was building it every so often I would hear him sigh and say, “Where is that piece? It’s missing.” He would get up from the couch, check the floor, look through the couch cushions, then come back to the table. Sometimes the piece would show up. Other times, he would realize the problem was not that the piece was missing at all, but that it had been placed wrong earlier. Some pieces seemed like they fit and looked right at first. But a few steps later, something would not connect the way it should. That is when he would stop, take a small section apart, and patiently rebuild it the right way

There were also sections that did not seem like much on their own. Standing alone, they did not really look like anything at all. But once they were connected to previous section, suddenly they made sense.

Then there were the moments that made me smile. He would say, “I got it,” or “this is amazing,” and he would hold up what he had just finished so I could see it. Slowly, piece by piece, and section by section something incredible was coming together.

When it was finally done, I could not stop looking at it. The flying machine almost looked real. It amazed me how hundreds of tiny, ordinary pieces could come together to create something so detailed and beautiful. Even the wings moved, flapping back and forth, bringing the whole thing to life.

As I watched him, I found myself thinking about how much our lives look the same.

Life moves in seasons, and each season adds something we cannot always see right away. Some seasons feel clear and purposeful. Others feel small, unfinished, or hard to understand. There are parts of our lives that do not seem to amount to much on their own, moments that feel ordinary or confusing while we are in them. But later, when they connect to what God is doing next, they begin to make sense.

The flying machine was not built all at once. It took patience, attention, and trust in the process. My husband could not skip steps. Even when things seemed right, they still had to be right for what came next. Each section mattered, whether it looked important at the time or not.

Our lives are no different.

God works with intention. He weaves meaning through moments we barely notice and uses seasons we do not understand until much later. What looks incomplete now may be exactly what is needed for what comes next.

In the end, the finished work reflects the wisdom of the Designer, who sees meaning in every piece long before we do. And just like that flying machine, when everything is finally connected, we are often surprised to see that nothing was wasted at all and went together as it should.