Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Abel’s machete sliced through the cool morning air, sinking an inch into the tree trunk on each swing. Moments before, he had knelt and prayed, “Father, please go before me today and watch over me.”

Abel wanted to use the tree trunk where it stood as a post for his house, so he had decided to cut the top off twenty feet above the ground.
“This will work out perfect,” he thought to himself as he clung to the trunk. “All those razor-sharp stubs of bamboo from the thicket I cut down yesterday will be covered by the top of this tree when it falls that way.

I’ll just jump the other way when the trunk snaps.

Just then there was a sharp crack, and the top of the tree swayed and started to fall. But it was falling the wrong way! Abel leapt wildly to escape the plummeting trunk. As he fell he realized that he was going to land right on the sharp bamboo stubs.

And then he was on the ground. “Where’s the pain?” he wondered, and he looked down. He had landed on his feet right in the middle of the thicket. Spikes of bamboo were touching his feet on all sides, yet not one had so much as broken his skin.

That was several years ago. Today when I visited Abel I found him discouraged. Satan seemed to be destroying his every effort to serve God faithfully. But he still had a light in his eye. “I never forget,” he told me. “I never forget that God answers prayers and watches over His children.

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