Nurture

If you believe that God is ultimately responsible for this world, you can have several different ways of looking at his role in the world. You could say he made the earth then abandoned it to struggle on its own. You could say that he made the world to be his own nasty little playground where he toys with all of his handiwork like a cat torments a mouse before he kills it. Or you could see the signs that God built into his creation everything it needed to be nurtured and provided for.

In the first book of the Bible, Genesis 1: 29-30, we read

And God said, "Look! I have given you the seed-bearing plants throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. And I have given all the grasses and other green plants to the animals and birds for their food." And so it was.

This was much more than a mere survival ration. We have to see the Garden of Eden as the perfect ecosystem, with every organism helping to guarantee the ongoing life of every other organism. Fertility was everywhere, abundant and unending, because the Maker had provided everything for life to be full in every respect. Thus all of creation bore witness, not just to the wondrous Glory of its Creator, but to God's power to nurture life, to richly sustain all the life forms he had made.

In the Book of Job, the amazing provision of God turns to poetry:

"Who created a channel for the torrents of rain?
Who laid out the path for the lightning?
Who makes the rain fall on barren land, in a desert where no one lives?
Who sends the rain that satisfies the parched ground
and makes the tender grass spring up?
Does the rain have a father?
Where does dew come from?"

If you can say it all happens by chance, you have more faith in a mindless, millions-of-years process of change than I do.