StewardLife Lesson 31
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STORY
In the language of the Tewa Indians of New Mexico everything has a different name depending on how it interacts with its environment. The name for wood that is in the trunk of a tree is different from the name for wood that is burning in a fire. The wood that forms the legs of a chair has a different name than the wood that has been ground to make the pulp for paper. The Tewa developed a sense of wonder in classifying life and life's events. They looked at the world in a vastly different way than the modern scientific community.
INSIGHT OUT
God's grace is active in our lives continuously. But we have different words for it based on how intensely that grace interacts with us. Sometimes we call it God's "sustaining power" -- that which holds the universe together. That grace is not obvious and perhaps not very important to us. We take it for granted. The next step up might be talents and spiritual gifts. We are occasionally aware that God gives them and how they are useful for us in earning a living or serving in the church. We may even marvel, at times, when God grants us flashes of insight into creatively solving a difficult problem. Then there's the "grace of the third kind," a more dramatic encounter of God's care directly, such as surviving a home fire, or narrowly escaping a serious accident.
We have answers to the intensity of life's experiences the Tewas struggled to get by observation alone. This web site invites you to see the world differently, through eyes that have been given new LEVELS of insight (Philippians 1:9-11).
EXERCISE
Think back on your life and identify where God's grace was so obvious that you couldn't have missed it. Those are the big interactions. Next, consider some of the other blessings you have in your life and make the spiritual connection between those blessings and God as the giver of those blessings. Third, begin to look for the hidden blessings of God in your life -- the ones you can't identify so easily. If you can identify just one, you are beginning to see life through a steward's eyes. In living the StewardLife, continue to look at all of life as a series of blessings from God, either directly or through others.
INSIGHT OUT
The Tewas developed a culture to deal with three major questions that have always puzzled humankind: Why is life so random? How does an event today affect the future? Is there a universal set of rules? Christianity deals with these human struggles by revealing to us a God who is consistent in both His expectations and grace (Malachi 3:6; James 1:17); whose care for humankind in the present is rooted in and evident throughout history (John 1:17; Gal. 4:4-5); and whose Law and Gospel function in every time and space (Psalm 139:8). As a steward of this kind of God, your life takes on meaning from a whole new perspective.
