“Consider the law according to which everywhere in the world, so far as you survey it, everything alive behaves toward that which in regard to itself can be considered as dead. See how everything living nourishes itself and forcibly draws dead matter into its life, how on all sides there presses in upon us the stored-up supply for everything living, which does not lie there dead but is itself living and everywhere produces itself anew, how with all the multiplicity of forms of life and the prodigious mass of material each form consumes in turn, each nevertheless has enough to run through the cycle of its existence, and each is subordinated only to an inner fate and not an external scarcity.
What infinite fullness is revealed there, what superabundant riches! How we are seized by the impression of maternal provision and by childlike confidence to play away sweet life in the full and rich world without any cares. Consider the lilies of the field; they neither sow nor reap, and our heavenly Father still nourishes them; wherefore, do not worry (Matthew 6:28-29; Luke 12:27-28).”
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) in On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers ed. Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1996) 36.