Readings: Luke 14:25-35, Acts 2:1-12, Secrets of Heaven 10490:6,7 (see below)
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Photo by Arnau Soler on Unsplash

Good morning, my friends. Happy Pentecost! Today we will be considering the question: What is Discipleship? What does it truly mean to “follow Jesus” in our lives as they exist in this day and age? Because, we all know of the 12 disciples in the gospels. We have had previous sermons on texts that treated of their journey, including their call. But that was a long time ago. Can we think of ourselves as “disciples” of Jesus today? What does that mean for us now?

Let’s begin with looking at the passage from Luke in our reading. Initially, it suggests that true discipleship is something unattainable for the vast majority. Who among us will truly forsake - nay, hate - our families in order to be a disciple of Jesus? Is such a thing even consistent with Jesus other teachings, such as the ones where we are told to love one another? Of course not. So we must look for a deeper meaning. What is Jesus really trying to tell us?

Swedenborg would assert that the way to understand this passage is to see how family members are being used as metaphors. The people who are typically the closest to us in our lives stand for the things that we hold closest to us in our hearts and minds. Our perspectives, our narratives about the world or ourselves, our identities and the actions we take that align with those, our habits and desires and preferences. When these desires that we are wedded to are evil, as in they privilege and support our own selfishness in large and small ways, and when these things that we think are false, again privileging our own selfishness in the same way, then yes, we need to “hate” them and cut them out. And certainly, the bibical language here is intense. We *can* have compassion for ourselves as we struggle to disentangle ourselves from them over time. But the overall message is clear: in order to be a disciple of Jesus, we need to be committed to the process of “carrying our cross.”  We need to be committed to the process of freeing ourselves and healing ourselves from everything that would cause us to create or perpetuate harm.

And while committment to this process requires many things, such as devotion, sacrifice and courage, chief among them, I believe, is humility. Because as we delve into the process of truly taking up our cross, things might not always seem so clear cut. 

This process of taking up our cross will play itself out on many levels, basically as deep as we wish to go with it. We can repent for or let go of any number of desires and ideas and their associated actions that are universally agreed to be “bad” or harmful. Anger, stubbornness, jealously, avarice, defensiveness, prejudice, this list goes on. Sometimes it is very easy to see where we have hurt someone and why. And then, the remedy is very simple. Apologise, *try* not to do things like that anymore, and eventually our diligence and our efforts make us become someone who *doesn’t* do things like that anymore. This is the process of regeneration that we spoke of last week. Eventually, we find we have cut those metaphorical “family members” from our lives, as Jesus asked. We have grown and evolved, and we hold mutual love as the ideal closest to our hearts and minds.

But sometimes the process doesn’t feel quite so simple. As we go deeper into it, we might need to increase our understanding of what are truly good or harmful desires, ideas and actions. Things that we have been taught are good or bad, might have contextual or societal elements, deeper layers, that require untangling. Separating righteous anger and from self-referrental anger, is a good example. Many of us, especially women, might have been taught that anger is always bad, and it certainly *can* be when we give ourselves over to it for selfish reasons. But, anger can actually also be a valuable guide if we are willing to learn how to regulate our experience of it. Can we learn how to avoid acting from it, and if we do, can we make sure we will willing to clean up the mess we make? Can we learn to ask questions of our anger so that we can see what is beneath it: hurt, fear, sadness? Can we learn how to harness its righteous aspects and use it to motivate our pursuit of justice?

Or on the other side of things, what if we have been taught that something is an unequivocal good, but maybe there are aspects of it that are not? Productivity is highly valued in our capitalistic society. We are groomed to achieve, and produce, and climb a ladder of ever-increasing achievement to produce both security and satisfaction for ourselves. But does it produce meaning? Does it produce community? It is good to take responsibility for ourselves, to contribute to society. But to what end? Our own exhaustion? Perhaps some reframing of this idea would help any one of our discipleship journeys.

Or, there is the notion of being useful and caring, in our tradition, and many others. We might have learned that these things are the highest good, and indeed they are! But the lessons our half-evolved selves end up taking from this might sometimes bear scrutiny. Those of us, and I’m including myself here deliberately, who tend towards co-dependence might need to pay attention to why and when we try to be useful and caring. I know for myself, if others are not OK, I find it very hard to be OK within myself. And so then in order to recalibrate my own inner tension, I try to *make sure* others are OK, which can often turn into over-functioning, and not letting other people have their own experience. I’m sure you can see how especially this plays out in parenting. Something that seems like it is good—being useful and caring—actually might not be so entirely, and might be coming from a self-centered place, an inability to regulate not feeling OK. 

And so this is where is all connects to our reading from Acts. The most important part of discipleship is not actually devotion but humility, essentially remaining teachable. Because like everything, devotion can have its dark side. It can become so rigid and unyielding, so attached to this or that ideal, that it actually prevents our growth. In my co-dependence just described, the possiblity exists of being so attached to the idea of “I’m doing something good!” that we are blind to the harm. And then, our very idea of what is “good” becomes one of those metaphorical family members that Jesus tells us to forsake. Or with the earlier example of anger, attachment to the very notion that it is always utterly “bad” means that we might miss all the really juicy and important ways it could help us grow, if we were to come at it all from a different direction.

In our Pentecost story from Acts, the most amazing thing about it was that the Holy Spirit spoke to everyone in their own language, that each person could “hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues.” And they asked each other: What does this mean? When we remain teachable, when we center the question “What does this mean?” God will always be speaking to us in our own language. When we have ears to hear what is next for us to learn, God’s Holy Spirit will be present to communicate what we need. And the humility to hear it, to not throw up obstacles and objections based on our various attachments, is the bedrock quality required for taking up our cross, for being a disciple. We need to yield ownership, even over our best efforts and our best ideas.

And this means that the final thing we need to let go of is our attachment to what being a disciple will look like, our attachment to some future perfect self that we have devised. We don’t actually know where our journey will take us. We don’t actually know who we are to become and what that will look like. As Jesus stated in our reading: …those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. Discipleship is ultimately not about what we are willing to give away, but what we are willing to give up, the level to which we are willing to yield ownership over the journey itself.

I’m finding this to be a particularly hard lesson. Perhaps you are too. Or not. This is the beauty of the way the Holy Spirit speaks to us all so uniquely. What a blessed thing; to be so precious to God that we are guided so individually. For we know that there is not a language in the world, nor a language of any singular soul, that God does not speak fluently. Amen.


Readings:

Luke 14: 25-35
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?
29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,
30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace.
33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?
35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Acts 2:1-12
1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.
2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.
3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.
7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans?
8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?
9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome
11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Secrets of Heaven #10490:6-7
…Is there anyone who does not see that these words should not be taken literally, at the very least from the fact that they say without any qualification that father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters must be hated before anyone can be the Lord's disciple, when yet it is one of the Lord's commands, that no one should be hated, not even an enemy?

[7] It is self-evident that the things which are a person's own, that is, evils and falsities in their own order, should be understood by the names of those family members, since it also says that a person must hate their own soul and renounce all their possessions, that is, the things which are properly theirs….’Being the Lord's disciple' means being led by Him and not by self, thus by the forms of good and the truths which come from the Lord and not by the evils and falsities which come from the person.

Readings: Exekiel 36:23-28, John 3:1-7, True Christianity 586 (see below)
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Today we will be considering the question: What is Regeneration? This is a particular term used in our tradition to indicate the process of spiritual growth that leads us toward having a heavenly character. It is ongoing, it is constantly evolving, it is always challenging and sometimes delightful. It is the stuff of our life. As the author Annie Dillard says: How we spend our days… is how we spend our lives.(1) If we are committed to a tracjectory that is leading us to become more loving, more generous, more responsive to otheres, then we are engaging with the process of regeneration, no matter what we might call it.

The term regenerate means to re-create or revive something somehow. In nature, a salamander can re-grow an entire limb after it has been lost. In human beings, our bodies naturally regenerate themselves gradually by replacing our cells over time. This biological contruct can serve as a powerful metaphor for our emotional lives, as note the times a meaningful experience has re-shaped our habits or our identities. In theology, the specific metaphor of being born again is often used, as in our reading. In Jesus’ words, entrance into the kingdom of God requires that we be re-generated, re-made, re-born. 

This is indeed a very potent metaphor. How moving it is, the sense of being held in the womb of God as our heavenly character is being slowly formed, built cell by cell, moment by moment, decision by decision, all the while being nourished by a loving parent who would give literally everything of itself, its own lifesblood, to this re-creation. 

So, why does the process of regeneration matter?  Because like all things, God wants us to be happy. But crucially, God wants *all* of us to be happy. And so God made our happiness part and parcel of everyone else’s happiness. Mutual love is the key to God’s kingdom.

But, we are not a collective, like bees, or other insects. We don’t naturally just act for the good of the hive. We are born with an actual sense of selfhood. And thus lies the central temptation, the central quest, of the human life. Can we balance that sense of selfhood with our relationship to others? Can that selfhood learn to exist in mutuality, to give over part of itself to others, in order to find a greater sense of wholeness?

We are born into a world that requires us to work and strive for survival. As comfortable as our society might seem, we only need to look to the news to see that we are a hairs breadth away from any number of threats to that stability. Our selfhood knows this. And so it strives for domination and accumulation, to gain from these things what feels like psychological safety at every opportunity. And herein lies the space for evil to enter the picture. And not just mustache twirling evil of substantial size, but everyday cruelty and thoughtlessness, anything that serves the centering of one particular selfhood, ours, to the exclusion of others. This is the condition we are all born into. This is what needs to change so that we can enter into the happiness and peace that God has planned for us.

Perhaps we can use the illustration of a board game. Does anyone remember the Game of Life (if that is not too much on the nose!)? The game pieces were little cars and you would put people inside them as you traveled a game board that represented the different milestones in a typical life: education, family, employment etc. It’s cute and fun, but as with most board games, the goal is to win, to beat the other players. If someone rolls an unadvantagous number on the dice, we might cheer because it will put us ahead. If we can knock then off the board entirely, even better. 

But there are some board games that are designed to be collaborative, where it is only possible to win together. And this is why the process of regeneration matters. We don’t always know exactly how to do that, how to advance our common good together, whether in relationships, communities, societies, nations. Our selfhood will have its fears and doubts about such a path, and will have plenty of learning to do. And so we do the work of spiritual and personal growth.

And like being born, this process is not always comfortable. Part of the process is tension, conflict, and crisis. Not necessarily overtly with other people, or though that *can* be part of it. But rather, an essential tension between what our selfhood wants and the practices of mutual love: listening, relinquishing, sharing, including, caring.

Swedenborg writes that we have been given a special ability that allows for our spiritual progress: the fact that our will and our intellect are separate. Our will is the driving force of our life, the engine, what we want. But it is technically possible to both want something, and also to know that this thing is not good for us, or for others. A very silly example: we might want some chocolate cake. But we also might know that in this particular case, we shouldn’t have it. Maybe we are gluten-intolerant, maybe we have already had enough sweets for the day. In young children, this separation of will and intellect is not yet complete, and so we note that if a young child wants the cake they will take the cake - there is no daylight between what they want, what they think, and what they do. But as we grow and mature, there can be a pause beween those three things. In those pauses, this is where God can act, and this where we can cooperate with God’s action. We might recall the famous quote from Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning:  Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

And this is why we do things like spiritual practices, like coming to church, engaging in contemplation and reflection, meditation, journaling, or whatever works for us. We want to make those spaces between what we want, think and do to be spacious, fertile, and useful spaces, designed to help us be as loving as we can be. We do the work of re-generating our selfhood, away from instinctive and incessant self-centering, and towards the practice of mutual love. 

How does this occur? Swedenborg writes that the process begins with self-awareness. We notice, we listen, we ask: want kind of presence am I being in the world? How do my actions affect others? What am I creating with my energy? And as we gather this information, we might receive answers that indicate we are hurting ourselves or others. In a religous context, these things are what have historically been called sins. Whatever we call them though, the knowledge of them give us an opportunity to move forward. If we admit their reality without defensiveness, and feel pain on their account, this is what is called repentance.

But the process continues: from this space of accountability, we ask for help. Certainly from God, potentially from others according to context, and we take a step into a new life in which we don’t do that hurtful thing anymore. And we certainly may fail a little or a lot in living that new life, but over time, with intention and practice, we succeed. A habit that our selfhood thought was necessary to its own supremacy or survival is put aside, and we learn that we can be whole and safe without it, and in fact, that we are more whole and safe without it, within God’s plan for our happiness. 

And sharpen this point, Swedenborg writes, if we don’t follow this path, we are *unable* to love our neighbor.(2) We might be able to exist alongside them. But *love* is impossible without a willingness to enter into this process. And this is indeed what God has called us to: to LOVE one another. This is not a call about sentimental feeling. It is call into the process of regeneration, into the process of helping each other become reborn for the sake of us all. 

If we wish to wrastle this whole idea back into traditional Christian frameworks, then we see that the process of regeneration is what “saves” us. If you recall from our sermon on salvation a few weeks back, we reframed the notion of salvation as healing, as the experience of becoming whole. So when we say that regeneration is what confers salvation, it is not at all as if we try very hard to be good girls and boys, and if we reach a certain threshold, then God plucks us out of the mire and gives us a heavenly life. It’s rather that the process of regeneration saves us because it heals us. Heals us of the state of being born into self-centeredness, and the habits and learnings that our selfhood has deemed necessary, and trains us instead in mutual love, so that we can all be each other’s salvation. 

Of course, what I have outlined above is simplifed. There layers upon layers of work to do if we are willing, and we may return to central tensions at different points in our lives as our capacity to do the work has evolved and changed. Each person’s unique selfhood and context is different, so the work will look different for everyone. This is as it should be. Yet we are joined by the central and corportate quest - to become spiritual beings, become beings who have God’s spirit at our center, a center that grounds us and holds us in love and heavenly connection. Amen.
(1) Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
(2) Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity #530


Readings:

Ezekiel 36:23-28

23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
24 “ ‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.


John 3:1-7 

1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council.
2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.
7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

True Christianity 586
We can be regenerated only gradually. Each and every thing that exists in the physical world serves as an illustration of this fact. A seedling does not grow up into a mature tree in a single day. First there is a seed, then a root, then a shoot, which develops into a trunk; then branches come out of that and develop leaves and finally flowers and fruit. Wheat and barley do not spring up ready for harvest in a single day. A home is not built in a single day. We do not become full grown in a single day; reaching wisdom takes us even longer. The church is not established - let alone perfected - in a single day. We will make no progress toward a goal unless we first make a start.
People who have a different conception than this of regeneration know nothing about goodwill or faith, or how each of these qualities grows as we cooperate with the Lord. All this makes clear that regeneration progresses analogously to the way we are conceived, carried in the womb, born, and brought up.

Readings: Psalm 139:1-4, 13-18, John 14:1-7, Divine Providence #59, #201, #203:2 (see below)
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Photo by Stephen yu on Unsplash

​Today we will be spending time with the question: What is Divine Providence? This is a concept that is particularly important to our tradition, given that Swedenborg wrote an entire book about it (my second favorite one, if anyone is asking).

How do we understand this concept? In basic terms, Divine Providence is the notion that God (the Divine) provides for us human beings in some way. And not so much providing what we *want* but what we *need*. Swedenborg writes that Divine Providence is “Divinity working among us, banishing our love for ourselves.(1) Love for ourselves here does not mean healthy self-esteem or self-care, but rather self-importance or self-obsession, and learning to let go this kind of self-love is an important part of being able to build a heavenly character.

A bigger question though, than “what” Divine Providence is, is how it works? Because certainly it seems obvious that a God who loves us *would* provide for us, much as parents or another beloved adult, might provide for their children. But *how* does God do that? Well, there’s the real question. What does Divine Providence look like, how do we experience it, why does it matter?

One thing that our tradition agrees upon is that Divine Providence is not interventionist. And by that I mean, that God does not intervene in human events in either a random or transactional way. We might hear the phrase “God works in mysterious ways” to explain what feels like a miracle or an act of divine intervention. Or we might be exhorted to pray and supplicate to God for something that we desire. And it is tempting to think that we are special enough to receive a miracle, or diligent and devoted enough to pray sufficently. But, God does not provide anything to one person and not another; God does not and cannot play favorites among all God’s beloved children, and God cannot be convinced to do so no matter how much we pray. God will always give freely to all; the remaining question is always our openness.

Swedenborg writes:

Sound reason tells us that everyone is predestined to heaven and no one to hell. We are all born human, which means that we have the image of God within us. The image of God within us is our ability to discern what is true and to do what is good…This ability is the image of God; it is enduring with everyone who is whole and is never erased. (2)

So, by the very fact of the universality of God’s love, there are some limits to way the Divine Providence can act. And perhaps this seems counter-intuitive, for how can there be limits for an infinite being? But it is actually not God’s freedom that is paramount to God, but ours…God relinquishes ultimate freedom and creates structure around God’s action in order to preserve our freedom of choice, and the image of God within each of the us.

We can imagine Divine Providence being like a stream that move us forward in its current. It acts upon everyone who enters the stream in the same way. If we come upon a boulder or some other obstruction, it’s not that God magically smites the boulder for us, but rather continues with the gentle force that will help us get around it. No amount of prayer can affect the current; it is what it is. But we can decide how we relate to the current. We can swim against it if we wish. Or we can work with it, noting the ways that our position might affect the flow.

Further, Divine Providence is not only all inclusive, it is pervasive. It not only takes care of our ultimate trajectory (like a stream pushing us forward to a destination) but it exists fully in each of our smallest moments as well. We heard in our reading that Divine Providence must focus on our eternal state at every step of our journey because God, being outside of time, sees our whole future as present. However, it can only do that *because* it attends to the slightest details. Our stream only takes us somewhere because in each moment we decided to stay in the stream and not get out, or stubbornly cling to a branch. Our future is made up of a multitude of tiny details in sequence, and so of course God is in each of these as well. 

Sometimes it is a little hard to comprehend something like Divine Providence that is so big and so little at the same time. How do we grasp on to it? How do we trust or have gratitude for it? And perhaps that is why even us Swedenborgians like to sometimes capture Divine Providence and put it in a perceptual box. We might say “It was Divine Providence that this happened or that happened.” And Swedenborg says that is indeed one way we can recognize it, that it is sometimes hard to know how Divine Providence is working in the moment but we can see how it played out in retrospect. There is relief and trust and gratitude to be found in the recognition that God was with us all the while, even when we couldn’t see it. 

However, for me, I find that this approach is lovely for sometimes, but not quite enough to nourish everyday spirituality. It captures how God is with us for seminal, perhaps life-changing things, but not so much how God is with us for the tiny, maybe inconsequential things. And so for myself, I’ve decided to change the term Divine Providence, a noun, a thing that might feel like it has happened, or will happen only in discrete and bracketed times, to The Divine Providing, a verb that is happening all the time, anywhere.

For me, it shifts my perception a little, into a space where I can trust that God is active for my welfare in an ongoing way. Because, it certainly is lovely to feel gratitude and awe for the way that things sometimes come together so well: meeting a significant other in an otherwise implausable way, getting just the right business card at just the right time, or even in my case, getting ordained right when the perfect call opened up nearby. But many times, the most difficult emotional growth occurs for us human beings in the smaller moments: an argument with a loved one, a child getting a drivers licence, navigating rejection or success, trying something new, learning to apologise. When I call God’s guiding presence with me The Divine Providing, I can more easily believe and trust that God is really there, in these small but potent moments, giving me what I need. God isn’t picking and choosing the most important moments to be present; God is always present, always guiding, always flowing, always caring. 

This is a great comfort to me. The Stream of Providence is also a term that is sometimes used, and is of course, where I got my earlier metaphor. But for the times when we don’t feel like we are getting anywhere, when we can’t quite grasp a sense of movement, or perhaps feel stuck, I like to focus on a sense of providence that is more of an internal flow than an external flow. God’s Providence flowing into me, rather than myself flowing along with it. This isn’t a better way to see it necessarily, just different, and differently helpful at different times. One can also say that this way of viewing it more clearly puts the ball in my court. 

Swedenborg writes:

…God loves every one of us but cannot directly benefit us; he can benefit us only indirectly through each other. For this reason he inspires us with his love…If we receive this love, we become connected to God and we love our neighbor out of love for God. Then we have love for God inside our love for our neighbor. Our love for God makes us willing and able to love our neighbor. (3)

And this brings us to the final part of our earlier question. We’ve talked about what Divine Providence might look like, and how we might experience it. Now we come to why it matters. It matters to God because it is a way to guide us to our heavenly home and an eternity of happiness, and God loves each one of us deeply, and wants that for us. But it matters to us because our individual salvation can never actually be separated from anyone else’s. We’re not actually floating down the river by ourselves. God can’t literally take the hand of another person who is flailing, but we can. God can’t literally shout encouragment from the other side of the rapids, but we can. God can’t literally remind someone to float when they need to catch their breath, but we can. 

Divine Providence matters, and the way God has designed it matters, because it balances our individuality and our communality so well. God desires our partnership, and has given us real and meaningful agency. So, we can’t put our responsibility to others onto the shoulders of divine intervention; we can’t explain away our responsiblity to others by believing they didn’t pray hard enough, or do something else hard enough, or be something else hard enough. God’s providence doesn’t pick and choose, and so we can’t blame the brokenness of the world on it.

Instead, the level playing field provides an opportunity for us to see the image of God in everyone, just as God does. Like all of the ways that God loves us, God’s laser-sharp focus on our journey is indeed *all* for us and our benefit, and yet the moment we give ourselves to it we are invited to see, and love, and care for, everyone else in the stream. The Divine Providing for us and through us, for the wholeness of all. 
Amen.

1. Emmanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #207
2. Divine Providence #322
3. Emmanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity #457:3

Readings:

Psalm 139:1-4, 13-18
1 You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.


John 14:1-7

1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
7 If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Divine Providence 59

It has not yet been realized that divine providence focuses on our eternal state at every step of our journey. It cannot focus on anything else because Divinity is infinite and eternal, and what is infinite or eternal or divine is not in time. It therefore sees the whole future as present. Since this is the nature of Divinity, it follows that there is something eternal in everything it does, overall and in detail.

Divine Providence 201 

By "universal" we mean something that comes from details taken together, as a generality arises from specific instances. If you take the details away, then, what is the "universal" but something with a vacuum inside, like a surface with nothing inside it, or like a compound with no components?

Divine Providence 203:2

We can see from this that divine providence is universal because it attends to the slightest details, and that it is an infinite and eternal creation that the Lord has provided for himself by creating the universe.