Greetings from Pastor Rus

Rusyoak@gmail.com

http://www.facebook.com/revrusselyoak

(419) 989 – 1575

By the time you are reading this, depending on how fast you get to your mail, Groundhogs Day may either be coming or gone.   Punxsutawney Phil may be the best known rodent in the world other than Mickey Mouse.  Did he/will he see his shadow?  My money this year is on him not seeing his shadow because I think this winter doesn’t have a whole lot of oomph…  but then I have been wrong before…a lot.  I am amazed that a giant squirrel (they are in the same family) gets to predict the weather; of course I am also amazed that anyone can predict the weather.   Every day I get up and check the weather and I find myself wondering, exactly how do they know what temperature it is going to be 10 days from now?   How do they know that it will rain next week?  And how do they attach those percentages to all those predictions?
 

The heart of modern meteorology is a mathematical concept called chaos theory.  But chaos theory isn’t actually about chaos.  Chaos theory proposes that systems in nature only appear to be chaotic, like the weather, but are in fact simply so massively complex that they are nearly impossible to grasp.  The theories in this field of study have mysterious sounding names like “strange attractors”, “nonlinear systems analysis”, and “scale-invariant behavior” .  These theories are used to describe and predict everything from the weather, to the spread of a forest fire, to seemingly random human behaviors.   The numbers and calculations involved are so massive that they can only be accomplished by some of the most sophisticated computers on the planet.   Even with all this science, math, and massive computational engineering our scientists, like meteorologists, can only “sort of” be sure of anything.   In many cases Chaos Theorists have to declare a great number of things to be mysteries. 
 

It makes me feel good to know that even with all our capacities that our smartest and most capable thinkers are still stumped by mystery (and so are the groundhogs I hear).   It makes me feel better to know that to God all of this mystery and uncertainty looks clear as day.  Faced with humanity’s greatest accomplishments God still amazes and awes us.  In fact, the more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know, the more we realize God is yet more amazing than we thought before.  This God of wonder, mystery, and awe comes to us to know and love us.  Is this not the most amazing and awe inspiring mystery of all?  So, more winter, not more winter, the groundhog does not really know, neither do our weather predicting computers.   God does and he knows far more than that.  He knows us, inside and out...and loves us even more.

 
Blessings,  Pastor Rus