The references to God's providence in this excerpt from Dave Eggers's book Zeitoun seems to suggest that these musings are included in order to emphasize Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s unwavering faith. His children are rightly scared after having experienced Hurricane Katrina (they are terribly afraid of water and of bursting pipes) and having witnessed the sentence and imprisonment of their father, but Zeitoun resorts to his faith in God's providence in order to appease them and reassure them, and himself, that they will eventually overcome this difficult challenge.