SAVED BY A HURRICANE, the caption says. “Salvation belongs to the LORD,” the Psalm says (Ps 3:8a, BCP 2019, p. 272). There seems no reason that both cannot be true. About another matter, but equally germane here, N. T. Wright says about St. Paul:

There are two quite different ways of approaching this question, and I think Paul would have wanted to have both in play. He would have known all about different levels of explanation. He undoubtedly knew what 2 Kings had said about the angel of the Lord destroying the Assyrians who were besieging Jerusalem, and he may also have known the version in Herodotus, in which mice nibbled the besiegers’ bowstrings, forcing them to withdraw. He would certainly have known that one could tell quite different stories about the same event, all equally true in their own way (N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography, HarperOne (2018), p. 414).

Angels or mice? Angels and mice? Is it the binary Fujuwhara interaction between hurricanes Humberto and Imelda that will stall Imelda some 150 miles off the South Carolina coast and then pull it out to sea? Well, yes, quite possibly on a natural level. Is it the angel of the Lord who, at the Lord’s command, will stall Imelda and steer it into the Atlantic? Well, yes, most certainly on a supra-natural level. God deigns to use agents — material and spiritual — to accomplish his will and we praise him for both, remembering Psalm 3:8 — salvation belongs to the LORD.

As an Anglican, I often pray The Great Litany which contains this intercession:

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence and famine,
Good Lord, deliver us (BCP 2019, p. 92).

And, yes, I have prayed this with Humberto and Imelda in view. I never once concerned myself with specifying the method the Good Lord was to use in delivering us (them) from lightning and tempest and flood. The binary Fujiwhara interaction is fine with me.

Why God at some times stalls and steers hurricanes away from land and delivers those in the path of destruction and at other times seems indifferent to human suffering — seems, but is not — I have no way of knowing. That is far more complex than Fujiwhara. But, it is all somehow bound up in his love and our salvation, which brings us back again to Psalm 3: Salvation belongs to the LORD.

Imelda’s path could change once again, could confound meteorologists once again, could stall off the coast of South Carolina with flooding deluges, could slam ashore with devastating winds. So, let us not grow slack or weary in our prayers. Pray for angels. Pray for mice. Pray for both.