Butterfly Praying

Jesus said to them, “Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, if someone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. For this reason I tell you, whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:22-24

Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling, “No, it cannot be. Not a little thing like that. No!”

Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.

“Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels.

It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?

Eckels is a character from Ray Bradbury’s classic science fiction story, A Sound of Thunder.  Eckels, along with the safari guide and two other hunters, had time traveled 65 million years to shoot a T-Rex dinosaur. Eckels overcome by fear and panic, steps off the time travel path impacting all of the future. Upon return to 2055, the time travelers are confused to find a changed world. Language has been altered and an evil dictator is now in charge. It was a simple misstep that changed and altered the course of history.

Though Bradbury’s story is science fiction, we do know singular events have changed the course of world history. Could they have been altered? Edward Lorenz is credited as the official discoverer of chaos theory and out of it, the term, The Butterfly Effect. The title is the layman’s term for a complex field of scientific study that says a small change in starting conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes or “does the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

Walking with Jesus on a dirt road toward Jerusalem, his disciples were taught the butterfly effect of prayer. They were told that they could move mountains. Yes, they had seen the sick healed, the dead raised to walk, the blind to see, the deaf to hear and lives restored. They knew Jesus could move mountains but how could they move mountains? What mountains would they move? Why would they want to throw a mountain into the sea?

What mountain or mountains are you facing? Maybe it is a mountain of fear, anxiety, or hopelessness. Maybe it is a mountain of rejection or loneliness. Maybe it is a mountain of family problems.

We can begin a butterfly effect of change through prayer. “When God gets ready to shake America (and the world), He may not take the PhD. and the D.D. God may choose a country boy…God may choose the man (or woman) that no one knows, a little nobody, to shake America for Jesus Christ in this day, and I pray that he would.” –Billy Graham

Instead of being overwhelmed and defeated by what we see in our culture, we take Jesus at his word. We pray the mountain of child abuse we see in our society is thrown into the sea. We pray the mountain of violence we find in the cities be thrown into the sea. We pray the mountain of sexual immorality, consumerism, prejudice, and on and on be thrown into the sea. What mountains can stand against a mountain-moving God?

“During the darkest periods of history, quite often a small number of men and women, scattered throughout the world, have been able to reverse the course of historical evolutions. This was only possible because they hoped beyond all hope. What had been bound for disintegration then entered into the current of a new dynamism.” –Brother Roger of Taizé

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, praying Believers can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. God is ready to move mountains with us. Mountain-moving praying doesn’t make sense to the world and probably not totally to us but as Francis Chan said “something is wrong when our lives make sense to unbelievers.”

Jesus set in motion the real butterfly effect. On a cross, Jesus forever altered the course of human history. God had been at work from the beginning and now history’s timeline was marked for eternity because of the strike of a hammer on a nail.  It was a sound that has reverberated through the echoes of time. One event, marked by a cross and an empty tomb, forever changed the course of mankind.

God is great,