I'm almost through my second full day here in South Africa as a "bionic man.”  After my CTscan 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 have been since I first had life, but some events give you a more accurate appraisal of that blessing. 

I told a small child the other day, “You don’t have to be afraid, but you can always choose to.”

A fact that gives power to the choice of fear is that life is fragile.  That’s been inherent in all of our existences.  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, dressed as men and trapped in a prison of their own self worship, thought it a good idea to rob the white people.  Three were hurt, but I’m not wholly convinced that we were the biggest victims that night.  We got away with our lives, they walked away still slaves to their whims, still wondering when they’d be caught, still with no hope beyond the next petty heist. 

Life can do that to you.  If you let it, it will own you while you 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. 

Some might think I should be angry, frightened, or traumatized, questioning “Why did God let this happen?”  But I’m not. 

Am I glad I got robbed, along with my friends, that I have an IV in my arm, or that I’ve got lots of medical bills to sort out?  Not particularly. 

But in a far more real way, I’ve gained so much.  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. 

So, (Lord Willin), I’ll return back to the States soon with, and to, loving family and friends that I also did not earn, and leaving behind newly found friends in South Africa.  But I’ll return knowing that I cannot stay forever.  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. 

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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