I tweeted this a bit ago: I sometimes find clarity in chaos. Does anyone else?
My twitter-posed question resulted in crickets. Not a single person responded. I’m not sure if that was a factor of having very few followers, or those I do have were in a much too chaotic state to respond.
I know it seems counterintuitive, but I do sometimes discover clarity in moments of chaos. Life swirling around me. Opinions flying in from all sides. Disputes raging. Politicians attacking. Disagreement running rampant. The ideal of civilized debating lost in the mire of making enemies out of those different from us.
Chaos is viewed as things being out of control. It is utter disorder and confusion. Chaos is seen as a destructive force. It is the unpredictability of a pinball flying around inside a glass enclosure. Bouncing one way, then another. All you can do is somehow keep it in play with a hope of it hitting something big.
Yet as unruly as a pinball can be, whomever has indulged in this activity finds its addictive draw. You keep trying as you believe this time your paddle slam of the ball will propel it to the correct location.
This is the clarity in chaos. You find hope in the unpredictability. You continue to try as you learn something new each time. The clarity is not in the situation, but the idea you can contribute to something bigger. You can overcome the randomness of the ball’s trajectory.
You may have heard of chaos theory. This describes the qualities of the point at which stability moves to instability or order moves to disorder. Chaos theory states that unlike the behavior of a pendulum, which adheres to a predictable pattern a chaotic system does not settle into a predictable pattern due to its nonlinear processes. Examples of chaotic systems include the behavior of a waft of smoke or ocean turbulence.
Clarity lies not in the uneasiness chaotic systems might create. The clarity is knowing that even in the chaos there is stability. We can find solace in the storms chaos might birth.
In the Gospel of Mark 4:35-41 we find followers of Jesus in midst of a chaotic situation. It was a violent storm on a Lake. In their fears. In their involvement in the unpredictable they had clarity. They had the clarity to know where calm in chaos could be found. It was in Jesus.
The point is, sometimes we need the storms. Often we need the chaos swirling around us. We need this to clearly know that it is in Jesus that we find the calm.