AS I write this the snow is starting to melt, the Beast from the East has moved on to fresh pastures, and we await with anticipation the next bit of weather. I wonder what will happen next and will we be ready for it?

Weather is notoriously hard to predict. Although modelling is getting better all the time, the weather is a good example of a system that may be described by Chaos Theory. Dr Edward Lorenz, originator of the term “butterfly effect” (a little disturbance from a butterfly wing could result in a great storm somewhere else) was a mathematician and meteorologist and is thought of as the father of Chaos Theory. Simply put, he said that to predict the weather accurately you would need to know all the current “initial’ conditions throughout the atmosphere precisely. In addition, one would need to know all the current conditions throughout the oceans as well, since the oceans control the atmosphere. “In view of the inevitable inaccuracy and incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long-range forecasting would seem to be non-existent,” Lorenz concluded in an interview in 2007.

It is not surprising then, that we were not sure how the “beast from the East” was going to affect us locally, all we could do was get ready as best we could (by putting on a vest from the west, perhaps?).

‘Being ready’ is a strong theme in Jesus’ teaching. His disciples wanted to know what was going to happen to them. They assumed that Jesus had perfect knowledge; that if anyone could predict the outcomes from the chaos that was 1st century, Roman occupied Israel, it was going to be him. Interestingly his answer to them, as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel, was not very precise or helpful, filled with metaphor and imagery that really gave no detail at all. In fact, he went on to tell them that only God the Father knew about times, dates and how things were going to pan out. However, he was very clear on what they needed to do about it all. The important thing for them, as the future unveiled itself, was to be ready, by doing the things he had asked them to do, to spread and be good news to those around them, to put that love they had seen in him into practice.

It has been heart-warming to hear of and see so many good neighbourly things going on in these cold and dismal times. This is surely what Jesus would approve of, and part of what he was instructing his friends to do. It would seem to me that to counter the “Beast from the East” or similar, we need to be ready to put some of that “Love from Above” into action. It won’t stop the snow, but it will bring some warmth into our communities, and who knows, perhaps like the butterfly effect of chaos theory, a little love done here could spin up a storm.