Our grandchild marathon continued this week with two delightful granddaughters spending the week with us. Such fun!

The best toys at our house are those their parents played with when they were their age.  LEGOs and Playmobil sets and well-loved stuff animals. We also have a few new games and toys which we haul out, including a Plug & Play Puzzler. The Puzzler is a flexible vinyl cube with eight colored plugs which played correctly form the desired design. There are at least 48 variations requiring skill levels ranging from starter to wizard with junior, expert, and master in between. Our 11-year-old granddaughter is especially good with the Plug & Play Puzzler.  Me not so much so.

Earlier in the week, having solved a starter and junior challenge in mediocre time, I decided to attempt the solution to the final wizard problem. Three days later, my answer has yet to be made. And I’m not going to look at the answer section at the back of the instructions booklet. I may get it some day.

I’m better at word games than at puzzles that demand spatial awareness and would prefer Trivial Pursuit to a game that requires even the most basic mechanical ability. Problem solving of the Play and Plug sort is not my strong suit, to use a game metaphor of a different sort.

Puzzles puzzle me. I am also puzzled by the ugliness of our political process, the disregard of beauty and excellence in our culture, the lack of love in our discourse, and our refusal to grant the grace of forgiveness in times of the mildest offense.

In fact, God puzzles me. His unchanging love, his undeterred mercy, his unending grace, his unsurpassed excellence and beauty puzzle me; my heart and mind find his ways uncomprehensible.

The prophet Isaiah may have been puzzled by God, as well. God assured him that such puzzlement is to be expected:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

We’re taking the girls back to Missouri today, and I have yet to solve that final wizard level Play and Plug challenge. Maybe I never will.

God’s love, mercy, grace, beauty, and excellence are puzzling but also so comforting.