1. Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence

Divine Providence Is the Form of Government Exercised by the Lord's Divine Love and Wisdom

To understand what divine providence is--that it is the way the Lord's divine love and wisdom govern us--it is important to be aware of the following things, which were presented in my book on the subject.

In the Lord, divine love is a property of divine wisdom and divine wisdom is a property of divine love (Divine Love and Wisdom 34-39).

Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created (Divine Love and Wisdom 47-51).

Everything in the universe was created by divine love and wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 52, 53, 151-156).

Everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom (54-60 [55-60]).

The Lord looks like the sun to angels; its radiating warmth is love and its radiating light is wisdom (Divine Love and Wisdom 83-88, 89-92, 93-98, 296-301).

The divine love and wisdom that emanate from the Lord constitute a single whole (Divine Love and Wisdom 99-102).

The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, created the universe and everything in it from himself and not from nothing (Divine Love and Wisdom 282-284, 290-295). These propositions may be found in the work titled Angelic Wisdom about Divine Love and Wisdom.

296. There are three things in the Lord that are the Lord--a divine element of love, a divine element of wisdom, and a divine element of service. These three things are made visible outside the sun of the spiritual world--the divine element of love through its warmth, the divine element of wisdom through its light, and the divine element of service through the atmospheres that enclose it. On the emanation of warmth and light from the spiritual world's sun--warmth from the Lord's divine love and light from the Lord's divine wisdom--see 89-92 [93-98], 99-102, and 146-150. I now need to note that the third thing that emanates from the sun there is an atmosphere that serves as the vessel of warmth and light, and that it emanates from that divine aspect of the Lord that is called "service."

304. Because of this common origin of everything in the created universe, its smaller components have a similar characteristic. That is, they go from their beginning to their limits, limits that are in a relatively quiet state, in order to come to rest and persist. In the human body, this is how the fibers develop from their first forms until they become tendons, and the fibers together with their smaller vessels develop from their beginnings until they become cartilage and bone, where they become stable and durable.

Because there is this kind of process from beginnings to limits for our human fibers and vessels, there is a similar procession of the states of these fibers and vessels, their states being sensations, thoughts, and feelings. These too go through a sequence from their beginnings, where they are in the light, to their limits, where they are in darkness; or from their beginnings, where they are in warmth, to their limits, where they are not. Since they have this kind of progression, there is a similar progression for love and everything involved in it and for wisdom and everything involved in it. In short, this kind of progression is characteristic of everything in the created universe. This is just what I said in 222-229 above, that there are levels of both kinds in everything that has been created, no matter how large or small.

The reason there are both kinds of level in even the smallest things is that the spiritual sun is the sole substance that gives rise to everything, according to the spiritual concepts of angels (300).