You’ve probably heard someone mention the “Butterfly Effect.” I’d like to tell you about the origin of the phrase.

In 1961 MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was using an early computer to study weather prediction. The system of partial differential equations (if that sounds complicated, well, it is) that govern weather had been well known to meteorologists.  There was no way to find exact solutions.  He was using his computer to compute approximate solutions to a simplified version of the equations.  Each computation would take a couple of hours.  He was basically using his computations to approximate future weather based on the (hypothetical) present weather conditions.  He was shocked to find that only small changes in the present conditions could result in large differences in his future predictions.  Eventually it was described as though a butterfly flapping its wings in Amazon was causing a hurricane in the Atlantic.  Now, fortunately, this is an overstatement, and our current severe weather episodes are not the result of groups of nefarious butterflies.

Like most academic meteorologists, Lorenz was essentially a mathematician, and he spent most of the rest of his career mathematically analyzing this problem. His work was the impetus for the currently very active mathematical research area of chaos theory. When he started his study, he thought that these strange observations were due to the crudeness of the approximations he had to make on his primitive computer.  After some time he showed that this was not the source.  They were intrinsic in weather systems (and other similar systems as well) due to the manner in which they were complex.  Since 1961, new techniques and high speed computers have led to very good short term (7 to 10 days) weather prediction, but his work shows that long term predictions may be close to impossible.

Our emotional and spiritual weather is even more complicated than physical weather.  It often times seems chaotic, and the smallest thing can have a huge effect, for good or bad. We can sometimes see short term consequences of our actions and decisions, but in the long term we often meet with surprise (or shock).  Trying to control everything is hopeless, and we find ourselves like Paul, who in Romans 7:15 says, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.”   The answer, which is hard for us to accept, is to let go and let God direct us.   We should have faith in our God who loves YOU and me unconditionally.

Jim