his essence and give part of it to one person and another part to another.
He gives it all. He also gives us the ability to adopt as much as we wish of
it, whether a little or a lot. The Lord says that he has a home with those
who do his commandments, and that the faithful are in him and he is in
them. In a word, all things are full of God. We each take our own por-
tion from that fullness.
This is true of atmospheres and oceans, and also of everything that is
universal. The atmosphere is the same on a small and a large scale. It does
not limit itself to giving one aspect of itself to someone who is breathing, a
second aspect to a bird that is flying, a third aspect to the sails of a ship, and
a fourth aspect to the vanes of a windmill. Instead, each thing draws on
certain aspects of the atmosphere and applies to itself as much as it needs.
It is the same as a barn full of grain. The owners draw from it the
provisions they need for a given day. The barn does not determine what
they receive.365 (b) Therefore the Lord flows into everyone with the entire essence of faith
and goodwill.This follows from the previous point, since the essence of
faith is life from divine wisdom and the essence of goodwill is life from
divine love. Therefore, since the Lord is present along with these things
that belong to him (namely, divine wisdom and divine love), he is also
present along with all the true perceptions related to faith and all the good
actions related to goodwill. “Faith” means all the truth from the Lord that
we perceive, think, and speak. “Goodwill” means all the goodness from
the Lord which moves us and which we then intend and do.
[ 2 ] As I said just above, the divine love that emanates from the Lord
as a sun is perceived by the angels as heat, and the divine wisdom from
that love is perceived as light. Someone who does not think beyond
appearances might surmise that the heat I just mentioned is mere heat
and that the light is mere light, like the heat and light that emanate from
the sun in our world. In fact, the heat and light that emanate from the
Lord as a sun hold in their core all the infinities that are in the Lord.
That heat holds all the infinities of his love and that light holds all the
infinities of his wisdom. Therefore they also hold an infinity that
includes everything good related to goodwill and everything true related
to faith. The reason for this is that the spiritual sun is present everywhere
that its heat and light are present. That sun is a sphere that immediately
surrounds the Lord, radiating from his divine love together with his
divine wisdom. (As I have noted a number of times before [§§ 24 , 29 , 35 ,
39 , 41 , 49 , 63 , 66 , 75 , 76 , 360 ], the Lord is within that sun.)