Angel on the Ladder

Posted by admin

November 27, 2008

Jim Mitchell and his twenty-year-old son David were in the midst of a construction project, building a 12 foot by 16 foot utility barn in Jim’s back yard, in a country area in northeast Ohio. “I am not in construction,” Jim says, “but David was working with an Amish construction crew that summer.” Both men had also built such items through the years, and were at ease around lumber and ladders.

Jim was putting the finishing touches on the peaked roof, leaning over the edge of an old wooden stepladder. “I was a little too high,” Jim admits. “And my reaching over and pushing on the peak caused the ladder to go out from under me.” The ladder fell, and landed on its sides, which gave way, breaking into large jagged pieces. Jim came crashing down on top of the pile.

David watched, open-mouthed. “He thought I was a goner,” Jim says. But Jim had landed exactly between two rungs, without an inch to spare, and he was perfectly fine. Shaken, he crawled out of the broken ladder and looked at it. It was then that he noticed how odd his fall had been.

“If I had landed a little to one side or the other, I would have fallen on the broken wood frame and been injured, perhaps fractured some bones” Jim says. “Two or three inches in either direction, and I would have been impaled.” But somehow, completely out of control, Jim had fallen onto the only safe spot that existed.

For years Jim has taken a bit of quiet time each morning, to ask God to be with him, and to make known His will, so Jim can better serve Him. And he believes there was some force that guided him directly between those two rungs. “I think God sent an angel to look after me that day,” Jim says. “I know that God does for me what I cannot do for myself.” And sometimes sends His angels to do the same.