protected by the divine, but do we protect it back?

“Protected by divine energy.”

It’s a phrase that shows up everywhere; on TikTok captions, in Instagram affirmations, whispered as a kind of shield against life’s chaos. I’ve said versions of it, too. 

But whenever I hear it now, I pause. Who exactly is this “divine energy” we’re talking about? Is it a God, the universe, something nameless? And if it truly is watching over us, shouldn’t we think about what it means to protect it back?

The question hit me harder one day when I stumbled across a TikTok. The creator was talking about divine protection while splicing together clips of mountains, forests, rivers, and sunsets. And that’s when something clicked. Out of all the places people say the divine lives, it makes the most sense to me that it lives in nature. The trees that outlast us. The rivers that move on, no matter what we’re carrying. The sky that stretches endlessly, asking nothing but still giving light, air, and warmth.

That realization shifted the phrase for me. Because if I really believe the divine shows up in the natural world, then “being protected” stops feeling like a passive prayer and starts looking like a responsibility. I can’t keep asking nature, the universe, or the "divine being" to shield me while I do nothing in return. It feels hollow.

And yet, we do it all the time. When something goes wrong, we blame the universe. When something goes right, we thank the universe. It’s convenient. It keeps us from looking too closely at our own choices, our own accountability.

But maybe the cycle was never meant to work that way. Maybe protection is mutual. Maybe we are being asked, quietly, to protect the very thing we’re asking protection from. In my case, to start caring more for the earth. To some, to respect the balance of what we’ve been given, to stop waiting passively for blessings to fall into our laps.

If the divine really is everywhere in the water, the air, the soil beneath our feet, then every careless act against it is also a dismissal of its protection. And every small act of care becomes an act of reverence.

So I wonder now: what if “protected by the divine” isn’t a promise we simply receive? What if it’s a responsibility we choose to carry?