Ministry in the Face of Natural Disaster

As a counterpoint to the more secular concerns of my first post, I wanted to address the spiritual element as well.

Months ago, following the tsunami in Southeast Asia, I asked a class that I was teaching at Fairfax Church of Christ how we should try to minister in the wake of a natural tragedy. It's different for situations like terrorist attacks or wars, because then it's easy to fall back on the idea that people - not God - created the situation. But it's much more difficult when a catastrophe happens in the course of nature, because so many people see God as playing a very direct role in the way that events play out here on earth. When a natural disaster occurs, it becomes almost impossible for them to think of God as being separate from the event.

Some prominent Christian preachers suggested that the tsunami was a product of God's wrath, just as I'm sure that those same preachers will say the same thing in pointing to the fact that New Orleans was a city of notorious licentiousness and that the hurricane also destroyed all of the casinos on Mississippi's coast. The question that I want to toss out there for discussion is whether there is any merit to their claims. Should natural disasters be seen as true "acts of God"? If so, why? If not, why not? More importantly, whatever your answer is, how do you use your understanding to minister to those affected by tragedy?