The Great Puzzle

Good Morning Everybody,
So imagine a guy receives a gift–it’s a puzzle, his first puzzle ever! He’s NEVER done a puzzle before!
So he dumps the pieces on the table and starts checkin’ them out. Hmm, that’s funny. He studies piece after piece, and he’s stunned. “That’s bizarre! I can’t believe they made such a ridiculous mistake.” He puts the pieces back in the box, grabs the gift receipt and heads to the store.
“Hi, I’d like to exchange this puzzle please.” “What’s wrong with it?,” asks the nice woman behind the counter. “Well, this puzzle is defective.” “Defective? What do mean?”, she asks. “Well, there are no matching pieces!”, the man responds. “Really?! That’s so strange! I’m so sorry! I’ll get you a new puzzle right away.”
The employee comes back with a new puzzle and opens it up for the man to double check.
The man starts carefully sorting thru the pieces and can’t believe it. “This one’s also defective!” The woman is shocked. She quickly digs through the pieces hoping to find a match. ”Here, these go together!”, she excitedly exclaims. “And these two…And this one.. and another.” The man was in awe. He couldn’t believe it!
As the man marveled at what he saw, he finally asked, “How in the world are you making those pieces connect? They’re totally different!
In fact, they’re practically opposites!”
It was then that the woman understood that this man had no idea how a puzzle worked. This poor guy thought that the pieces had to literally match–be identical– to go together! But of course, the only way pieces fit together is if they’re different.
Perhaps we can keep this analogy in mind as we emerge from the holiday of Shavuos. Unity among the Jewish people will be achieved when we connect with each other’s differences to build a greater whole. If Hashem wanted us to all be the same, He would’ve created us that way. But instead, our personalities and character traits come in many different “shapes”, yet we’re all made to fit together.
When we focus on the “big picture,” that Hashem chose us to be His Holy nation and to follow His Torah as best we can, then our differences bring us together. Everything falls into place. And achieving unity will no longer be a puzzle…. It’ll be our reality.
Have a peaceful, joyful day everybody,
Marshall
Keep on Building!