What is Divine Providence?

Readings: Psalm 139:1-4, 13-18, John 14:1-7, Divine Providence #59, #201, #203:2 (see below)
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​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.