The butterfly effect and the providence of God

You’ve probably heard of the butterfly effect—the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in Asia can cause a hurricane in the Caribbean—which is an illustration of one of the key elements in chaos theory, that of sensitive dependence on initial conditions. The idea is that a small change, such as a butterfly’s wingbeat, can produce large results. This sort of sensitivity to initial conditions is one of the things which makes a chaotic system chaotic. (Chaos is not in fact disordered or random, merely highly complex and unpredictable.)

Now, I don’t know much about chaos theory, not being the mathematical type—I leave that to my brother-in-law the chemical engineer. Theology is more my line; and in that line, what I do know is that God works his will through chaotic systems as well as through obvious order, using small events at one point to bring about significant results at another point.

I was reminded of this, in a small way, over the course of the last several days. Last week, as I was sitting in my office planning the Sunday service, I wanted to doublecheck the lyrics to Charlie Peacock’s song “The Harvest Is the End of the World” (from which I had pulled the title for that week’s sermon). I didn’t feel like going home to grab the album (strangelanguage), so I figured I’d look it up on the Internet. I found it, in the archives of two blogs I’d never heard of before, one called Mysterium Tremendum (scroll down to November 12, 2003), and its parent blog (for lack of a better word), The Thinklings. You’ll notice the latter blog heading the links list over on the left; it’s a great blog, and was a completely unexpected and equally welcome discovery.

In the course of exploring The Thinklings, I noticed a post headed “Pachelbel Is Haunting Me,” with the YouTube video of an incredibly funny rant on Pachelbel’s Canon in D, courtesy of a comedian/musician named Rob Paravonian. (If you check the January 2007 archives, it was posted on January 5.) I finally got around to watching it today, laughed hysterically, and played it for my wife, who did the same. She also suggested sending the link to a friend of ours. Said friend called us maybe 20 minutes later, declaring that it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen, that she’d had a terrible day which was now “a zillion times better.” She’s been having a rough couple of weeks, of which today was worse than average, and needed a boost; clearly, this was God’s provision for her to lift her spirits. And it all began last week when I didn’t feel like walking back to the house to grab a tape.

OK, so maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal—but it was to my friend, and it was to me; and it’s an illustration of how God weaves everything together to bring about the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes, even in the little things. To Him be the glory.