Even less may you become self-important—in view of the fact that the lily and the bird, after all, are simple—so that you (perhaps in order to feel that you are a human being) become clever, and speaking with reference to some particular tomorrow, say: “The lily and the bird, of course they can—they who do not even have a tomorrow by which to be pl

you might truthfully be able to say of yourself : “I cannot do anything else, I cannot do otherwise.”

For there is one thing that the lily and bird unconditionally do not understand, that, alas, most people understand best: half-measures.

For despite its surroundings the lily is itself because it is unconditionally obedient to God; and because it is unconditionally obedient to God, it is unconditionally free of cares, which only those who are unconditionally obedient—especially under such circumstances—can be.

You, too, are of course subject to necessity. God’s will is indeed done in any case, so strive to make a virtue of necessity by doing God’s will in unconditional obedience.

A human being needs to know that even if all human beings gave up on him, indeed, even if he were on the verge of giving up on himself, God is still the God of patience. This is incalculable wealth.

In nature everything is obedience, unconditional obedience.

As noted, the certainty of downfall would disturb a human being, so that although only the briefest of existences had been allotted him, he did not fulfill the possibility he had in fact been granted. “To what purpose?” he would say, or “Why?” he would say, or “What good will it do?” he would say: and then he would not develop the whole of his pote

For to cast sorrow away, but not upon God, is “distraction.” But distraction is a dubious and ambivalent remedy for sorrow.