Just now nothing seems able to direct man's mind into channels that will enable him to absorb that wisdom and understanding that the Psalmist speaks of. And so he finds himself applying his mind to just ordinary things of life — remembers quite unthinkingly how wise his mother was while her children were growing up. She used to provide the necessities of life for them, preparing for the summer in the winter, what to plant, how to use; and in the summer preserving fruits and vegetables, storing when in season for the winter.
And as I sit by my fireside during the cold weather and the rain pouring down, I begin to realize what a far-seeing mother Mother Nature is. What a dreary home it would be if she had not stored away those precious rays of Heat and Light, which in this generation are its very life blood — those precious black diamonds we call Coal.
She knew 60 million years ago that we should need them, and so she stored them away, sealed them up tight. It was done in such a way that her children could obtain them, but would have to labor hard for them, and develop mental faculties in the process. They were meant for all her children and not for just the few who lived where she had stored them.
Like the wise woman, she did not keep all her treasures in one basket; she distributed them all over the globe so as to make her children interdependent, and say to one another, "Give us some of your coal and we will give you corn and meat, fruit, rubber, oil, wines, iron and wood, tea and sugar." In that way we begin to realize that we are one family and cannot live without one another. It makes us look around us, and helps us to realize that all life is interdependent, and that injury to one is an injury to all.
Mother Nature knows what our necessities of life will be 60 million years hence and we can depend upon her. She has never failed to provide for her children, because she herself is a child of Divinity, and wherever she may store her treasures Man will be guided by that inner light of divinity. Thus he will find her greatest treasure of all, the Christos within himself. And then it is his to labor in the spirit for the benefit of all things, and become at one with the Father. Thereby will he find that Wisdom and Peace that passeth understanding.
(From Sunrise magazine, May 1953; copyright © 1953 Theosophical University Press)