Many were evangelical Christians, and so it made sense that the circle included Mr. Kuhns, the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in El Campo. Less predictable was the presence of Michael Vowell, the bearded, yarmulke-wearing senior rabbi of a messianic synagogue in Houston, along with his wife, Lauren, and their three children.

Some did not know one another, or for that matter the Klimples. It mattered little. Each felt called by faith to lend their hands — and legs and backs, which would soon ache with soreness — to an elderly woman in distress.

For Mr. Klimple, 59, a solid, sideburned engine mechanic with grease under his nails, the outpouring of support for his mother was too much to absorb. As he prayed aloud, his eyes reddened. Tears fell onto a white T-shirt already stained with sweat and grime. He paused to compose himself, without success.

“I thank you, Lord, for the things that you’ve given us, the grace and mercy that we take for granted.”

Since the days of the Bible, all manner of natural disasters — floods and earthquakes, pestilence and famine — have tested the devotion of the faithful and provoked the most fundamental theological questions. Is God benevolent or retributive or both? Why is there so much human suffering and why does it afflict the righteous as well as the unrighteous? Does everything in fact happen for a reason, and if so what divine purpose could there possibly be in leaving an old widow like Mrs. Klimple homeless?

Many of those in the prayer circle allowed themselves to wonder, but not for long. There was too much to do. And nothing that had happened, not the deaths or destruction of homes or loss of crops and livestock, had shaken their faith. In fact, to a person, they said the flood and its aftermath had strengthened it.

At least part of God’s plan, each said in subsequent interviews, could be detected in the formation of the prayer circle itself. Here were strangers and friends, aged and innocent, rural and urban, coming together to humble themselves before God and put their faith into practice.

It was a scene repeated time and again in the aftermath of the storm, from Bay City to Beaumont, as cleaning crews hauled mountains of possessions to the curb. It was just stuff, they told themselves, the accumulations of this earthly life, not an eternal one. Everyone was safe. God was still good.

“Lord, I want to thank you that we’re not in worse shape than we are, because we know that others have suffered even more.”

And yet, it was bad enough. After soaking for four days in calf-deep water, the single-story house reeked like a high school bathroom. Floors and carpets were sludgy with mud. It took hours of sweeping to force the remaining water out the door.

The four bedrooms were wrecked, along with most of the furniture. Some of Mrs. Klimple’s most cherished photographs, like those of her late husband, Jesse, in uniform during the Korean War, were beyond salvaging.

There had been flooding in Wharton County (population 42,000) twice in the previous 16 months, but never like this. It arrived late, a full four days after Harvey inundated Houston, and it caught the Klimples and many others off guard. Remarkably, no one in the county perished. But much of a bumper crop of cotton sat moldering in the fields, and livestock losses were substantial.

Mrs. Klimple, who built the blond brick ranch with her husband in 1968, oversaw the emptying of her house from the kitchen. She gripped a soaked brown towel as if it were a security blanket, first wiping her face, then burying it, as her belongings paraded past: the box springs and bed frames, the rocking chair, the lamps, the bedroom drawers still stuffed with clothes.