I know I’m not the only one finding it hard to concentrate, and this spills over into my spiritual disciplines. In my bible reading lately I’ve been poring over the history books. I’m in 2 Kings, which will be rewarding long-term but can be so painstaking and boring to keep track of who’s who and why these stories were considered significant enough to be put into Scripture. On top of that, I’m finding it really hard to pray as well, and I feel like I only have a mustard seed of faith.

But despite my feeling of spiritual weakness, God has been teaching me a lot through my plants, my new fascination. And a few days ago I looked at my little jelly beans succulent, or what’s called in Spanish dedos de Dios, or fingers of God, from a different angle, and was so surprised to see that it was actually growing in an orderly and beautiful way.

From the side it looks completely random and chaotic, though in a charming little way. But in fact, like any succulent, like any plant, like any tree, it grows according to what we can summarize by the mathematical concept of fractals. Plants are in fact the easiest way to understand what a fractal is: a tree trunk splits into two, then those branches split into two more, and on and on, creating the recognizable shape.

Each plant has its own shape and pattern of branching and leaf placement. It’s truly amazing; even the spacing of trees growing in a forest is orderly and can be measured using fractal geometry, check out this PBS documentary for more details, it blew my mind when I first saw it.

This is why it’s so hard to make CGI trees look convincing, or even render a CGI forest: it’s infinitely complex, orderly, and mathematical by nature. We really can’t see the forest for the trees! It requires so much time and effort and scientific knowledge to begin to comprehend the complexity and the interconnectedness of life, in just a slice of rain forest, yet forests have always been growing in this way, whether there have been botanists or dendrologists or mathematicians around to observe and measure them.

It just reminds me that in this year, when things feel meaningless or chaotic, even if I don’t understand what’s going on or how to hope or pray for my future, there is order, there is meaning. And someday I hope the sight and understanding of it takes me by surprise, just like my little dedos de Dios succulent. What an apt name for such a plant!