Matt Faces Death & Chooses to Not Fear
Matt Blair is a force to be reckoned with. Last week he survived a machete attack in Zambia. His response below is a profile in courage.
I’m almost through my second full day here in South Africa as a “bionic man.” After my CT scan today, I don’t have any infections or abscesses, but I know I’ll be held on this continent for about two more weeks at least because of air in my brain after my recent skull fracture repair surgery.
As I sit here, I can see more clearly the goodness of the Lord in people. More people than I can count have reached out to and/or prayed for me and my family…many of whom I’d never met prior. Because of that, I’m honored and equally humbled.
I’m blessed to be alive. I told a small child the other day, “You don’t have to be afraid, but you can always choose to.” Life is fragile. But a life can also be as powerful and dangerous as it is fragile, not to other people, but to darkness…and for the Kingdom.
Nearly a week ago, I was ambushed with a machete as 3 people thought it a good idea to rob us.
Some might think I should be angry, frightened, or traumatized, questioning “Why did God let this happen?” But I’m not.
I see yet again how very, very, close I was to death many times in a one week period, and in a very tangible way! If that machete goes an inch or two to the front on the first strike or 3 inches lower, it busts open my temple or slices my neck. If an inch or so lower on the second strike, it severs my spinal cord from my head, and… game over. I didn’t earn that good fortune, but I received it among many others. Praise Jesus!
As a result, I’m given the opportunity to be even more dangerous to darkness than before, because I’ve once again been given a fresh reminder the borrowed time I’ve been living on my entire life.
I must go boldly and continue to unleash others to go boldly into the darkness both at home and abroad, for it is the only way I can spend this life so that people like my attackers will possibly be freed from their prison of self-worship, and to stop “bustin folks upside the head” for some paper and paranoia.
I think it’s important to consider that as children, these guys probably didn’t dream of wasting their lives with near murder and petty theft, but a lack of vision and one choice after another brought them to that place.
Are we not susceptible to the same fate? Maybe not in the sense that, we rob and attack, but a wasted life is still a wasted life no matter what we dress it up as.
You can cling to it with the illusion of control all the way to your death bed. But the truly dangerous and powerful release their lives as their “own” and in doing so are free to spend their remaining breaths in far more meaningful ways.
Are you going waste your fragile life trying to avoid the reality of it’s fragility with cheap distractions?
OR
Are you going to embrace the fragility, giving it for others before it’s pried from your cold dead hands, with a reckless abandon to leverage it for something that won’t die with you?
Because THAT is the kind of powerful and dangerous life, that fragile lives everywhere are desperate to encounter!
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Thank you for this challenge. There are a number of good things to chew on here, but one sentence I’m thinkin’ on is this, “You don’t have to be afraid, but you can always choose to.”
And Matt gave me a very good reason to choose NOT to fear–being dangerous to darkness. See? Now I’m thinking…
Yes he did, Rhonda.
“Are you going waste your fragile life trying to avoid the reality of it’s fragility with cheap distractions? ”
What a statement! Help us, Lord to choose reckless abandon as Matt has and make a difference with the powerful life You’ve given.
Thanks for sharing.
Giving your all. At first you think you have then as life progresses what is required of you to follow comes up against your “all”. Giving your life up proves your all, going back in the face of a real danger tests your “all”. That reality of your all reflects on Christ, we have One as a true picture. My all, Your all, what does it really look like. How do you give it or do you REALLY want to still give it. There are other witnesses around you besides Christ. Notice them and read what they say.
Thanks so much for sharing, Matt. God’s miracles are boundless and I’m so thankful you have had the opportunity to share in so many of them. May the Lord continue to bless you and keep you. Thank you.
How amazing is your perspective! I too will be praying for your healing. Thank you for sharing.