Jan 15, 2021
By Kevin Butler
Conference President 2021
Australian journalist Matthew Knott is a 32-year-old U.S. correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald. He was in New York City earlier this spring, celebrating a friend’s 30th birthday.
The party started out in Central Park with a socially distanced picnic. It was Matthew’s first group gathering in months due to the pandemic. Life seemed almost normal.
As nighttime approached, a handful of friends were eager to stay together but the bars and restaurants were closed. They decided to head to the birthday boy’s apartment and keep the party going on the rooftop of the five-story building.
Needing to go downstairs to use the bathroom,
Matthew thought he would take a quick look at the
skyline from the other side of the roof.
“I stepped out onto what I thought was concrete, but found there was nothing under my feet. Suddenly I was free-falling through the night sky, with my back parallel to the ground.”
He had fallen into an air shaft, a gap between buildings that allows for light and ventilation.
“Because it was so dark, I had no idea it was there. Fifth story. Fourth story. Third story. Second story. First story. When you fall from such a height, you have enough time to realize what is happening to you.
“I knew I was falling fast, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I remember thinking that I was probably going to die.”
Then Matthew crashed into the ground.
Waves of shock radiated throughout his body. He couldn’t figure out what hurt the most. But he was alive, and conscious, and scared.
Paramedics showed up within six minutes to take him to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital. He overheard some of the staff whispering about his fall and how
he managed to survive. A doctor came in to realign Matthew’s dislocated left shoulder, ignoring the patient’s plea that he had not been given the ordered dose of the strong painkiller fentanyl.
In that process, Matthew underwent what felt like “an excruciating form of medieval torture. When a nurse walked by, the doctor asked her how much fentanyl she had given me. She said she had not given it to me yet.”
Following successful surgeries on his wrist and elbow, and knowing he had not hit his head and could move the lower part of his body, Matthew felt he could truly celebrate his survival. He wrote, “The world seemed to vibrate with a new intensity.”
Matthew also reflected this way: “I’m not religious but I couldn’t help but wonder if this was some kind of divine wake-up call, a form of punishment for all the ways I had fallen short as a human being.”
Only upon returning to the site of his fall did Matthew learn that he had landed directly onto two plastic milk crates and some planks of wood. The occupant of the ground floor apartment said that they were there “for no particular reason.” They likely saved his life.
Matthew concluded his story* by saying, “I’m fundamentally the same person I was before, but with one big difference. I’m viscerally aware how tenuous our existence is. The meaning comes in what I do from this point on. I have been given a second chance at life—and it’s up to me to make the most of it.”
Can you identify with Matthew’s death-defying and life-changing incident? Your circumstances might not have been so dramatic, but has God spared you from harm? Was it a “divine wake-up call” for you? Has He restored you, for a purpose?
When God moves to restore, there are definite ripple effects. He has restored you certainly for your benefit, but also for others. Your testimony—based on God’s
restoration—can reach the ears of those who need a similar prospect for renewal.
Restoration ripples.
* The Sydney Morning Herald. “‘I was howling in pain’: How falling five storeys [sic] from a New York rooftop changed my life,” by Matthew Knott. October 23, 2020.
