Butterfly Effect

 

 

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Stainglass window

   Christmas 2011 

3rd Dec   Advent Party

12th Dec @ 2pm

Carol Service at Oak tree Court

16th Dec @ 2.30pm

Carol Service at Stratford Court

17th Dec @11am

Carol Singing outside Co-Op

18th Dec Nativity and Christingle Service and Carol Service

24th Dec @ 11pm (Service starts at 11.30pm

United Service at URC Etwall Rd

25th Dec @10am

Christmas Day Service 

 

 

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT’    

 Dear Friends,

The theme of this year’s Christian Aid week (May11th to 18th) is ‘YOU CAN CHANGE THE WORLD’.  It focuses on people, young and old, male and female, from rich and poor countries, who have in some way changed the world.  What unites them is their ordinariness.  What they have done is just as ordinary as collecting Christian Aid week envelopes from door to door.  Or just as heroic, depending on which way you look at it!  It is a good example of the Butterfly Effect at work!.

 Edward Lorenz was a physicist working in America in the 1960s on computer programmes for predicting the weather.  One day he made a mistake in his calculations- ma very small mistake, and yet it totally changed his results.

 It was, as he later explained, just as if a tiny atmospheric disturbance in one part of the world, no greater than the beat of a butterfly’s wing, can give rise to a force 12 hurricane elsewhere in the world.  So he called his discovery ‘The Butterfly Effect’- and among other things, it explains why weather forecasters so often seem to get it wrong!  It’s not their fault- blame it on butterflies!

 But the Bible reveals that the Butterfly Effect works in the world in general- that is, very small insignificant events can have world-changing implications.

 We have just reminded ourselves once again of the events of that first Holy Week and Easter Sunday.  Events that surround a man born in an obscure village; a man who never wrote a book, who preached as an itinerant for just three years, who never moved further than 200 miles from where he was born- and yet, who has had more influence on the world than any other solitary person. 

It is the power of the sun which drives the Butterfly Effect in weather systems. What is the power source which drives the Butterfly Effect in History?  Jesus himself had identified it for his followers on a number of occasions: ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you…..’ (Acts 1:8).  The power source is the Holy Spirit, and on the first Pentecost when the power supply was switched on, the ripples began to spread.  We don’t have to fear that our lives will be wasted when empowered by God’s Spirit.  No matter how apparently insignificant, they can make a world-changing contribution.  The Butterfly Effect can magnify the impact of our lives as it magnified the witness of the first Christians. 

I doubt you’ve ever heard of Edward Kimball, for he was an ordinary man, a Sunday School teacher in Boston, USA, who one day decided to take courage in both hands and speak about his Christian faith to his fellow shoe salesman.  With his heart in his mouth, he invited him to come to church with him the following Sunday.  That shoe salesman’s name was Dwight Moody.  Tens of thousands of people were to come to faith in Jesus through the life of Dwight Moody.  Burt the story doesn’t end there….

Moody came to England, and met F.B.Meyer, who was now stirred to do something for Christ.  One of those he influenced was an American student named Wilbur Chapman, who returned across the Atlantic, and began to hold Christian crusades with the help of a baseball player named Billy Sunday.  At one of these crusades, a young man named Mordecal Ham became a Christian.  And he decided to invite his friend along as well.  His name you may have heard of- Billy Graham!  It all began with a young Sunday school teacher. 

It could be YOU next!.  No life is ever wasted when empowered by God’s Spirit.  You may never know the influence you may have.

‘Therefore, stand firm.  Let nothing move you.  Always give yourselves fully to the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is never in vain’

 (1 Corinthians 15:58) 

You friend and pastor  

Jonathan Calvert