And indeed, this is already earnestness—when it is properly understood, not as by the dreaming poet or by the poet who lets nature dream of him—this: that out there with the lily and the bird you perceive that you are before God, which most often is quite entirely forgotten in talking and conversing with other people.
For when just two of us talk together, even more so when we are ten or more, it is so easily forgotten that you and I, that we two, or that we ten, are before God. But the lily, who is the teacher, is profound. It does not involve itself with you at all; it keeps silent, and by keeping silent it wants to signify to you that you are before God, so that you remember that you are before God—so that you also might earnestly and in truth become silent before God.