It won’t be too long before we may see butterfly’s visiting your garden (and plants). In the summer we can often see many of them flapping their little wings as they pass-by. Some facts about butterflies include…
Butterflies can’t fly if they’re cold.- Butterfly wings are actually transparent.
- Butterflies taste with their feet.
- Butterflies don’t actually eat anything.
- It’s really easy to attract butterflies to your garden.
It may seem rather odd that in these pastor’s blogs for our website, that I’d include information about the butterfly. However, a revelation of the Butterfly Effect can be life changing.
In what is commonly known as the Chaos Theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system, can result in large differences in a later state.
The term butterfly effect, is closely associated with the work of American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz.
Lorenz determined from his countless studies that a tornado, (the exact time of formation, the exact path taken) was initially influenced by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier.
Lorenz discovered the effect when he observed runs of his weather model with initial condition data, that were rounded in a seemingly inconsequential manner.
What this meant was that a very small change of the wing span and flight of a butterfly in initial conditions, creates over time a significantly vast outcome including a powerful tornado.
A seemingly insignificant act of change within the flapping of butterfly wings can produce an incredible impact later on.
One of my favourite books is titled ‘The Compound Effect’, by Darren Hardy. He affirms that by making small choices and acts of change, can have amazing results in the future.
Small acts of change such as getting up ten minutes earlier to pray. Or even reducing one cup of coffee, or increasing your steps by just 100 each day. A sequence of seemingly insignificant choices and decisions, over time can have tremendous results.
You are one person – you are designed by God and alive for such a time as this. Like the butterfly effect – you can make a huge difference to the world around you by making small, consistent changes in your world.
A seemingly insignificant act of change within the flapping of butterfly wings can produce an incredible impact later on.
One of my favourite books is titled ‘The Compound Effect’, by Darren Hardy. He affirms that by making small choices and acts of change, can have amazing results in the future.
Small acts of change such as getting up ten minutes earlier to pray. Or even reducing one cup of coffee, or increasing your steps by just 100 each day. A sequence of seemingly insignificant choices and decisions, over time can have tremendous results.
You are one person – you are designed by God and alive for such a time as this. Like the butterfly effect – you can make a huge difference to the world around you by making small, consistent changes in your world.
A demonstration of the butterfly effect was through the simple actions of
Edward Kimball. In 1854, Edward Kimball was a Sunday School teacher in Detroit, USA and one day he went to visit a 17 year-old boy who was in his Sunday School class who had little interest in God. During his visit with this young man at his job in a shoe shop, he led the boy into a relationship with Christ. That young man was D.L. Moody, who went on to become one of the greatest evangelists in the world, sharing the gospel with 100 million people, as well as founding Moody Bible Institute and The Moody Church in Chicago.
However, the butterfly effect takes momentum. Through his ministry, DL Moody was responsible for a British pastor named F.B. Meyer coming to faith. Meyer was later responsible for J. Wilbur Chapman coming to faith, and Chapman influenced Billy Sunday, another prominent evangelist of the 20th century. Billy Sunday was integral in a man named Mordecai Ham coming to faith. And Mordecai Ham was the preacher responsible for leading a young man named Billy Graham to Christ.
And that, is the impact of the butterfly effect from Edward Kimball, whose story reminds us to never underestimate the influence you can have on the world by sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with just one life.