Butterflies

"And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls." Alma 37:7

"One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever." -Edward Lorenz

The Lord of Strange Attractors

This is something I've thought about a lot already--it's kind of become part of my own system of beliefs, kind of like what my dad thinks about the dinosaurs. It is this: Faith in God requires that one believe that He acts for the benefit of mankind, i.e. that He intervenes (in some way; as will be shown hereafter, the clockmaker thing doesn't really have the effect that Deists would like to believe). A belief in His power doesn't necessary imply that one knows exactly what that power is or how it works, and for every visitation and fire raining down there are millions of things He does by inspiring people to act. Sometimes, though, God does things that simply are too difficult to explain by one identifiable inspired human action, and really have to have been triggered by a complex set of initial conditions. Those of you familiar with chaos theory will recognize that complex initial conditions are responsible for seemingly random circumstances later--chaos, in that sense, is not random at all. It is mathematically predictable, but complex beyond computing capability, in many cases.

And so are we. Nearly infinitely complex, our lives appear to be a random amalgamation of events, sometimes untouchably beautiful, others profanely unfortunate. None of it is so random that it cannot be corrected, bettered, and repaired by the Lord God who notices sparrows when they fall. True, our lives are never going to be a perfect Julia set because of our own free will, but there do not exist situations where a tiny stitch in time (whether or not that's in a quantum mechanical sense) cannot resolve our own idiocies.

Unfortunately for our lazier natures, the purpose of this life is not to create a flawless fractal, but to learn and grow. Learning and growth are painful, boring, frustrating, and heartbreaking. When it's all said and done, however, the Lord will defend both His faithful and those who do not quite come back (in different ways). For those who trust Him, even if they go astray, we can expect nigh-magical occurrences (though not always) to save us in the day of our darkness. Ironically, I get background for this from the miracles of Jesus, and M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Signs, which carry the theme of "small things are powerful in the hands of God", both in the loaves and fishes, and in the imperative to "swing away".

Also from my own life. This past month (abt 25 Feb-25 Mar) has been rough. I could recite my vernal list of maladies, but I'll refrain in text what I proclaim out loud. In all of these situations, however, answers and solutions were found in the midst of the problem, often with items, people, and situations preexisting but overlooked, and frequently with unexpected (occasionally undesired) but beautiful results. Please, have faith.

So I broke that promise of snark. I'm sure it'll come back.