Once a circle missed a piece. The circle was unhappy and wanted to be whole, so it went around looking for its missing piece. But it was not complete and therefore could roll only very slowly. It enjoyed the flowers along the way. It talked with ants. It enjoyed the sunshine.

It found lots of different pieces, but none of them fit, some too square, some too big, some too small. So it left them all by the side of the road and kept on searching. The circle kept going, up and down the mountains, across the sea. Then one day the circle found a piece that fit perfectly. Now it could be whole, with nothing missing. It got the missing piece into itself and began to roll. Now that it was a perfect circle, and it could roll very fast, too fast to notice the flowers or talk to the ants. When it realized how different the world seemed when it rolled so quickly, it stopped, left its found piece by the side of the road and rolled slowly away.

Just like the circle, we are in some ways more whole when we are missing something. A man might have everything, but he is in some ways a poor man. If he has everything, he will never have the chance to know what it feels like to hope, to enrich his mind by dreaming of something better. There is a wholeness about the person if he accepts his disadvantages and is brave enough to let go of his unrealistic dreams and not cry for doing so. There is a wholeness about the man or woman who is strong enough to lose someone or something and still feel like a complete person.

That, I believe, is what God asks of us—not "Be perfect", not "Don't even make a mistake", but "Be whole."