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On September 19, 2021, after a seismic event, the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma began erupting violently. This was not surprising. The entire Canary Archipelago is a series of volcanic islands. Indeed, the Taburiente Caldera in La Palma is the source of the term ‘caldera’ in geology. Spanish for ‘cauldron’, it refers to the large hollow chamber created after magma has been evacuated from the surrounding rock, leaving a space not unlike a giant cooking pot. Still, people have always built homes beneath sleeping volcanos. The ‘whys’ are manifold. Consciously or otherwise, they choose to gamble that their short life-spans—mere blinks in the eyes of geological epochs—will not coincide with a local catastrophic event. That Sunday, the Sabbath Day, local residents lost that bet. In a forested area at 3:15 pm, from at least five vents, the eruption began. The result was a kilometre-wide unstoppable wall of lava that began moving across the land towards those homes and their inhabitants. On the upside, this was not at all like the eruption of Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius sent a super-heated wall of gas down on the ancient Roman city, air-frying thousands of men, women, and children like so-many low cholesterol potato chips. Instead, five thousand La Palma locals were able to evacuate to safety. Their homes and life-savings could not be so easily moved from the path of destruction. House after house, one thousand buildings in all, were burned and buried, leaving their former occupants homeless and ruined.

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There was one notable exception. A lone house was spared when the flowing lava wall forked around it. To many, it was an act of divine intervention. Amid the hundreds of homes destroyed, this was a clear sign of God’s mercy. Dubbed ‘The Miracle House’, news media and social media sent forth word of the event. Many marvelled at the way the lava had parted like The Red Sea to save this one home. The question was, whose home was it that had been so miraculously spared? It turned out, the house belonged to a Danish couple named Inge Bergedorf and Ranier Cocq. It was their vacation home. Owing to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, they had not visited it in over a year. The retirees’ primary residence was in Denmark, almost 2,000 miles away. Sparing this couple’s vacation home, while leaving many impoverished locals homeless and destitute, made the message of the miracle clear: God moves in mysterious ways. Around the globe, people who did not know the couple or had never heard of La Palma praised the glorious mercy of the act and marvelled at it.

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The story did not end there. A few days later, the wall of lava ploughed on. It swallowed and destroyed The Miracle House. This was reported less widely, but its message was equally clear. “Seriously,” it said, “don’t even try to figure this stuff out.”

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