I was substitute teaching lately for a 1st grade class, and was impressed with how much chaos that age children can express, and was impressed with how the regular teachers manage to bring order into their lives. Perhaps that ordering of chaos is what we do as parents and teachers being made in God’s image as I started musing about how similar it was to the creative work of God. God starts with chaos is Genesis, and ultimately ends in Revelation with a new order, with everything in its rightful place.
In reflection, the two places that stand out where God moves to create chaos out of order are both when he is displeased with mankind’s sin twisting things in the Flood and the Tower of Babel stories.
Do you see ordering chaos as a calling? What other examples can you see in scripture and in life? Or is it just me projecting my slightly OCD side? In any case, it is a cold, icy day here, and I need to get back to organizing the spice rack.
Neat observations! That’s one reason I couldn’t imagine being in charge of an entire classroom of kids – I guess I have a low chaos tolerance, and need occasional breaks just from my own three. But in the grand scheme of things, taking a child from complete helplessness to hopefully competent adult is quite a feat of chaos-to-order. Still, I’m in the phase where I have to learn to embrace a certain amount of chaos in daily life.
When I get proofreading work to do, I often see it in that way – usually the writing is far above chaos by that point but just needs some loose ends tied up and consistency, but I still find a lot of satisfaction in those kinds of activities, such as cooking. On that note, either the enjoyment of order or the fight against chaos can lead to obsession and control-freak-like behavior when it goes too far, but there’s probably a good reason some are wired like that.
Maybe it’s part of the image of God in us that we are all called to in one way or another? Can you think of an activity that doesn’t do that, unless we are in the process of enjoying the results someone else’s labor to that end?
If I were to give a scientific slant to the story, I would note that chaos often produces a normal distribution. A Galton board is a good example:
That does give me hilarious visions of 1st graders moving their way through a Pachinko board. 
But it was ordered through a funnel?
Another science related thing is obviously the ordering of nature through evolution, achieving order aided by apparently random events. Sort of like first graders.
That would probably start us down the road of pedantic definitions and statistics, neither of which fits well with this thread.
As a more general observation, much of what we see in nature is the product of underlying chaos. I think there are a lot of parallels between the theology you speak of in the OP and how nature works. Just a thought.
Another avenue is God’s providential ordering of timing and placing amidst chaos (exciting and not pedantic ; - ), also a different theme than this thread.
True, on reflection. Not much more random than gas distribution, and plants take that CO2 and make all sorts of complex molecules, ultimately leading to ingestion by animals and the building of houses.
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