Did you ever listen to Mr. Muddlecombe on your radio? Poor old fellow: he was always puzzled and worried. There are many like him (that’s why I have tried to copy his picture in this week’s “Radio Times”). And, indeed, life in this world is often rather like a jigsaw-puzzle. It is hard to see how the pieces can possibly fit together; how, if it is true - as of course it is - that “God is love” (i St. John 4, 8), you can fit on to this all the sadness, poverty, pain of body and of mind, illness, in the world, and the fact of death at this life’s end.

Can you FIT THEM TOGETHER?

Not quite. St. Peter was a man who often asked our Lord why he did this, and that. You too will find that, throughout your life here, there are many things which you can’t understand, lots of questions that you ask God. It will help you to remember how our Lord answered St. Peter (St. John 13, 7). You see, we are all really children while we are in this life (even if we have had the ninety-first birthday of which I was talking last week). This world is our School, in which we must learn many lessons. None of us will be grown-up until we reach heaven. Then - and not until then - we shall have learned all the lessons, know the answers to those questions which puzzle us now, be able to fit all the pieces of the jigsaw- puzzle together, see the whole finished picture as it is at this moment in God’s mind.

But, if you keep the first commandment, if you “love God and put him first on all days and in all ways,” if you have religion, you will find, as you get older, that you can fit quite a lot of the picture together, are able to answer many of the puzzling questions of life, find a reason for heaps of things which worry those who don’t know God as well as you do.

And, take my advice, don’t let the other questions and perplexities worry you too much; don’t become muddle- combed. Read 1 Corinthians 13, 12. Everything will come clear one day, in heaven. Until then, trust God: he really does know what he is doing with us all: he is never, even for a minute, muddlecombed.