Trust a weatherman to come up with a mathematical excuse for not being able to predict the weather. Well, Chaos Theory is more than just a meteorological hardship - it is one of the greatest mathematical break-throughs of the 20th Century (don't worry, I'm not going to go all formal math on you. In fact, I promise to not use one single equation in this entire document). It was discovered by a meteorologist named Edward N. Lorenz: he was working late one night trying to simulate the weather on his computer. He had put in all his equations and everything into his program, and then proceeded to have the computer print out the answers to his equations every step. The computer would use the answers from one step as the numbers for the next step. And so, Dr. Lorenz thought he could calculate the weather. At some point, the meteorologist wanted to rerun some of the numbers, but he didn't want to start from scratch. Instead, he took some of the numbers from his print-out, punched them in, and he let the computer do its job.
However, the numbers that the computer churned out this time around started to diverge - they were going down a completely different path. Where on the old print-out the numbers read that it was a beautiful and sunny day, the numbers on his new print-out said that on that same day there was the storm of the century. He figured that there must be a bug in the system (perhaps a butterfly). Yet, the code turned out to be completely clean. So what was going on here?
Most of us deal with simple linear math in our day to day lives: we'll convert inches to centimeters, or double a recipe. We know that if we are off by a quarter of an inch in our initial measurement, we'll only be off a couple of millimeters in our final result. Similarly, if we misread the recipe, and thought that it called for two teaspoons of vanilla extract instead of one, we know that when we doubled the recipe, we added four teaspoons instead of two. With a chaotic system, that proportionality flies out the window. What had happened to Dr Lorenz's calculations is that the computer stored the numbers to eight decimal places, whereas the print-out only showed five. However, the weather simulation he was running was chaotic enough that all it took was one number to be off by one one-millionth (a human hair is roughly one one-millionth of an inch thick), and the entire train of numbers was grossly derailed. If converting a measurement from inches to centimeters was chaotic, it would mean that being a quarter of an inch off in the initial measurement would mean that we could be off kilometers in our final measurement. Or if baking where chaotic (and I don't mean when you have a three-year-old in the kitchen helping you), it would mean that doubling the wrong amount in a recipe could result in lava flowing out your oven door as opposed to the smell of chocolate-chip cookies. This is the proverbial butterfly that, when it flaps its wings somewhere in the Himalayas causes a hurricane in Florida.
Now, before you go out and start killing butterflies to stop hurricanes from happening, know that it is not every butterfly that flaps its wings that causes a hurricane to occur. It may be only one butterfly in a million that ever has a chance to wreak weather havoc on Florida's coast. It just happened to be at the right time and place so that one tiny flap of its miniscule wings sets off a chain reaction. Mathematicians call these points in space and time inflection points: it is the time and place where a small detail may have vastly disproportionate effects.
Life is a chaotic system. Most of the time, the details do not matter: whether you choose a chocolate chip cookie or a piece of lava-cake for dessert will, in most cases, have minimal effect on the outcome of history. But, sometimes, a small detail, because it just happens to be the right detail, can cause life to shift dramatically - and we may not even notice. Bending down to tie a shoelace may cause an old friend not to see you in a crowd, which may cause you not to have a conversation, which may....
That some details matter more significantly is an intuition that humanity has codified in fairytales and superstitions: there is no real reason to believe that a clover with four leaves instead of the usual three has any impact on our lives. Yet, without chaos theory, we would dismiss the butterfly in the Himalayas the same way. Note, I am not saying that a four-leaf clover actually does bring good luck - only that superstitions recognize the fact that the minute may be significant. Similarly, fairytales pay homage to the idea of the small being great: a bunch of beans is the starting point for a giant slaying; a wilting rose is the time-piece of a prince; a glass slipper is the gateway to the palace. The list goes on. What mathematicians only discovered fifty years ago is something that the rank and file has known since the dawn of time: some details matter.
So, how does God fit into this chaos of life? There's an old saying that the devil is in the details. I disagree - it is God who is in the details. God is not only the God who created the heavens and the earth, who upholds the stars with His right hand. He is also the God of the butterflies. God is as much at work in the minutia as He is in the miracles.
The bible talks about how the very hairs of our heads are numbered, how not a sparrow falls to the ground without God the Father knowing, how God knows every intimate detail of our lives. God knows which details matter, and which details are dross. To God, the incalculable intricacies of thousand details are clearly obvious. Of every minute decision that assails every human being, God knows the weight, the consequence, and the outcome. He sees all history unfold like a map. Out of a million butterflies, God knows which one will cause a hurricane in Florida, and He knows what to do to stop it.
I often look at the state of the world and of my own life and wonder: if God really is sovereign, where is He? Babies a few days old die; genocide keeps happening; I fear I'm not doing well enough at work; the church seems to be in recession, and it seems everywhere I look, God is either loosing or absent. But that is because I do not see what God sees: I see only the spectacular, the flashy and the immediate; God sees the significant, the worthy and the lasting. God is at work in the details that matter, and the work that God does will not be washed away by the latest change; God's work will bring about that change which will wash away that which is spectacular and seems to us momentous. There is a reason why in the moments of our struggles we do not see God at work, but when we look back after they have passed that we see He was always there - in the details. God works in the inflection points. God is the God of the butterflies.
It is so easy for us to dismiss what God is doing - to dismiss His works and plans in the face of the large looming powers of the moment. Yet, God tells us not to despise the day of small beginnings. More so than the acts and events of God, we tend to dismiss those he has chosen to work with. The Bible is filled with people whom God chose who were disregarded and disdained, from Rehab the prostitute, to Peter the fickle; from Gideon the nobody to Dorcas the dead. God does not chose people the way we do – because what we don't see is that these people are the butterflies of God - the people He has chosen to place at the inflection points of history so that their meager works would move mountains and bring about His desired end. Don't disregard the weak and powerless, for though they have not much strength, if they are at the time and place where God has chosen, their strength will be far more than enough.
The final word that I would like to bring up is that if you wish to live life at the inflection points, if you wish to have an impact on your time and your generation that far exceeds your poor resources, if you wish to be a butterfly of God, the only way to do it is by obedience. On our own, we have no hope in heaven or in hell of unraveling the chaos that is our life: we cannot find the inflection points; we are unable to sift through the countless details of our world and pluck the few that matter from the endless grains of sand; we cannot isolate the butterfly that causes the hurricane. But God can. And God does. And it is only by following God that we can live our lives where they do matter, where they do have lasting impact. Where God leads us may well not make sense - sometimes, God himself may not seem to make sense - but that is because God sees what we don't: God watches over everything, even the butterflies.