God can work any way he wants. They were not interested in explanations, they wanted to know why God had changed things, and what that meant to their own life. And that is where we are, too. Generally it is not the facts of the matter that are all that important. It is the meaning that we give to those facts.
Explanations are easy to come by.
But faith is a lot harder to come by. God tells us that he is our Father, and in so many ways shows us his love for us. But we don't believe him - we don't trust that he wants the best for us. Not because he has proven himself untrustworthy, but simply because we have chosen not to believe. God says that he has a good and gracious will for our life, but we want to run our own life, so we make excuses, we explain that he hasn't revealed his will, so that we have to take things into our own hands.