In everyday language, providence has come to mean a guiding force that looks after our welfare. The word providence comes from the Latin providere, to see ahead, to foresee and provide for what is needed before the need arises. Within the Universal Understanding of the God Consciousness, Divine Providence carries that same root meaning, but it is not an abstract or outside force. It is the working expression of the soul’s infinite intelligence, acting on our behalf in accordance with the Universal Laws of Karma, Cause and Effect, and Retribution.
The Hands of Divine Providence are the Hand of God at work in our lives. When we release a problem our mortal consciousness cannot solve and accept what the soul is bringing forth for us to understand, we come to truly understand Divine Providence itself.
This is why we leave what we cannot control in the Hands of Divine Providence. So much of our suffering on the physical plane comes from gripping tightly to circumstances that we cannot change. When a worry has no resolution and we hold it anyway, we feed it. The culmination of the worrisome thoughts becomes a mental body that grows as we struggle within it, until we see fewer and fewer alternatives and the worry itself has taken control of the situation. When we do everything within our power and then release the remainder, we are not abandoning the situation. We are handing it to the one intelligence capable of resolving it rightly, the soul, which knows our needs before we do and never calls into our vibration more than we can handle.
But this release is often misunderstood. To leave something in the Hands of Divine Providence does not mean to do nothing and wait. Providence does not do the work for us. It delivers to us an opening or a set of circumstances we can work with, and what we do with what is delivered remains our responsibility. Many of us release a problem, watch an opportunity appear that does not look the way we expected, and push it away. Then we wonder why our prayers went unanswered. The Hands were never empty. We simply did not take what was offered.
Our relationship to Divine Providence, then, has two movements. The first is surrender. We do everything in our power, and the rest, the part beyond our control, we release to the Hands of Divine Providence. The second is readiness. We remain alert, because the moment Providence delivers what we asked for, we must be willing to act.
Yet willingness alone is not enough if we cannot recognize what has arrived. Meeting the opportunity requires awareness, a receptive state, and the flexibility to see it as an opportunity, for it often does not take the form we imagined. The spirit in which we meet the circumstance determines how receptive we are to it. By spirit we mean that which moves us, that which drives us, the motivating factor within. If we come to the moment driven by fear or by rigid expectation, we will look straight at the answer and not see it. If we come guided by an open mind and receptivity, the same circumstance reveals itself as the very thing we asked for.
Seen this way, Divine Providence takes its place among the Universal Laws. Everything we cause to happen has an effect, and from that effect a new cause begins, in a circular motion without end. Out of cause and effect comes retribution, and out of retribution comes karma, not as punishment, for there is no judgment in it, but as the balance always maintained within the expression of God’s consciousness. The Hands of Divine Providence are the delivering hands within that circle. What we set in motion returns to us through them, and what they place before us becomes the next cause we choose. To understand Providence, then, is to understand karma. They are two expressions of the same law, the same intelligence bringing us exactly what our growth requires.
This is the balance the soul asks of us: to do our part fully, to release what is not ours to carry, and to recognize and receive what comes back to us in its proper time. Nothing is owed to chance. Nothing is left unattended.
Life has always held out for us a full hand. What we choose to take from that hand becomes our karma. The decisions and choices we make matter, for what is placed before us has been given by the Hand of Divine Providence.
So reach out your hands to the universe and ask for them to be filled. If your hand returns and seems empty, learn to see with more than your eyes, for what you have worked for is already on its way to you. There is no hand extended that is not filled. There is no question asked that is not answered.
Grow in light and grow in peace.
