Most of the universe is entirely predictable. Planets and stars go in predictable orbits for billions of years. Climates are fairly predictable. But as soon as there's a tiny bit of life, the behavior of a planet becomes unpredictable.
We already have space travel. We have artificial satellites. We have radio signals. In a century, we'll have colonized other planets. In a millenia, we would be changing climates on planets or polluting the universe with more satellites. Nukes are supposedly visible from space. So it's surprising we haven't seen this behavior in the rest of the universe. But an advanced enough civilization may have learned how to clean up after themselves and hide all traces.
As far as life goes, we've been around for 5 billion years. There's enough space out there for life to have emerged 8 billion years ago. Even with just a billion or so years of tech head start elsewhere, they should be far ahead of us. Arguably they'd be so far ahead of us that they'd be godlike in comparison.
Where does this higher power come from? There's a lot of answers, but it's sensible seeing that there are other hierarchies. We are a higher power. Higher than cells, molecules, electrons, quarks. Earth may well be some kind of chip or an egg farm. Maybe our purpose as a species is heating up the planet for some kind of galactic yeast.