Can the world exist without its Creator?

All creatures need the Creator as a child needs a nursing mother. In an exquisite homily, St. Jacob of Sarug compares a mother’s care for her infant to the Creator’s care for His beloved, the human being. He says:

“A child cannot live without a nursing mother, and a creature cannot exist without the Creator.

450 St. Basil of Caesarea, Hexamaeron 7.5 (NPNF II/8:93).

“If a mother abandoned her child after she gave birth, it would have been better for that child never to have been born at all.

“And if the Lord of the world had abandoned the world after creating it, it would have been annihilated. It would have been better for it never to have existed from the beginning.

“But He does not abandon it, just as the mother does not leave her child. Even if the mother forgets her child, God never forgets His creation (Isa. 49:15).”⁴⁵¹