Provide
Provide
18 March 2005
Philadelphia, PA
Provide is a powerful word. When I am providing, what am I doing? The word itself offers me some guidance. Literally, provide means "to see ahead", or "to look ahead". Providing means to hold the vision for action, to hold the provisions. It implies an action in service to others. It seems almost impossible for me to say the word “provide” without following it with “for”. A provider, then, is one who holds the foreknowledge, the awareness, of what is over the horizon line.
Until now I don’t think I ever really understood the word “providence”. I guess before now I thought of it in a vague way as some good things falling down upon us like a gentle, soothing summer rain. Now I am beginning to see providence as an active engagement, a taking care of, a posture of benevolent vigilance.
When we are truly at our best as providers – as adults, as parents, as friends - we are literally “seeing ahead” for another. True providing goes well beyond the material; it goes to a capacity to hold the image of a landscape that is beyond the horizon line, beyond what those we are in service to can imagine. To live with this deep intentionality is to have a visceral awareness that actions in the present, in this moment, ripple across the physical, emotional and spiritual landscapes beyond the limits of what usually can be perceived. So, in this sense living intentionally means to live providently. In a way it means taking the risk of perching in the crow’s nest so those below will eventually gain, or regain, their footing on solid land.
Intentional living, provident living, has within it the possibility for growth and deeper insight. The trick, of course, is to stay in the present on this perch and not become so focused on the future that I lose sight of the now, so focused on the material that I lose sight of the spirit.
Experiencing providence in my life means at times trusting in the vision of others, just as it means trusting my own vision to serve them as well.