PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

June 4, 2023

PREDICTING CHAOS

Mike Hoffman was the speaker for the Marshall County Alumni Association’s annual meeting on Thursday, May 11.  Hoffman graduated from Purdue University in 1981 with a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences. From May 1994 until he retired December 2021 Mike was the Chief Meteorologist for WNDU in South Bend.  When he retired, Mike and his wife moved to West Lafayette where he works part-time for Purdue University delivering science equipment to about 40 high schools as a part of the Science Express.

In context of making predictions for the weather, Mike said “It is impossible to predict the future of chaos.”  There are a great many factors that go into making a weather prediction.  Individually, they can be predicted and analyzed.  Taken together a predicted outcome becomes almost impossible.  At best, one can make an educated guess.  Even the models meteorologists use to make their forecasts do not always agree. Most forecasts consist of very likely possibilities.

Ward Byers was the speaker for the First United Methodist church’s United Methodist Men Saturday, May 13.  Byers is the Director of Marshall County Community Corrections.   Ward said that in working with persons in the correction system, it is impossible to know all the factors that determine a client’s motivations and actions.  This makes it difficult to create an effective program that will allow a client to make a successful reintegration back into society.  In spite of this difficulty, Community Corrections has an 85% success outcome.

Nero Wolfe is Rex Stout’s eccentric master detective who solves most of his cases without ever leaving his home.  One of the many reasons he does not venture forth from his domicile is dread of complex machines.  For Wolfe, a short trip in car is cause for trauma.  The idea of riding in a train or airplane is unthinkable.

Before God started creating, the world was in chaos.  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1).”  The conditions on the earth might be described as a hurricane on an ocean at night.  Into this chaos God created order.  Unfortunately, this order is so complex that it is beyond the complete comprehension of humans (See Job 38:4-41).

When the Psalmist contemplates the vastness of the universe, he wonders concerning the significance of the human race.  “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful them, mortals that you care for them (Psalm 8:3-4)?”  As we try to understand the complexity, bordering on chaos, of the world in which we live, we might well be tempted to shrink from the task.

In the following four verses the Psalmist finds reason to have hope.  “Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.  You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas  (Psalm 8:5-8).”  Here we find encouragement to predict the weather, to try to understand human behavior, to venture forth in all kinds of complex machines, and to make sense of the complex world in which we live.