“Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said, ‘he’s alive!'” – Acts 20:10 (NIV)
Paul was preaching so long that a young man named Eutychus, sitting in a window on the third floor, fell asleep and fell out. He was picked up dead. Luke, who was a physician and understood the difference between unconsciousness and death, is explicit: he was dead. Paul went downstairs, threw himself on the young man in the manner of Elijah and Elisha before him, and said: do not be alarmed, for his life is in him. He was carried away alive, and Paul went back upstairs and continued talking until daylight. The congregation ate a meal, talked until dawn, and Paul then departed.
The most striking detail of this story is not the miracle itself. It is Paul’s response to the miracle. He raised a dead young man, made a brief announcement, and then went back upstairs to continue the sermon. There is no recorded celebration of the miracle, no extended testimony moment, no dramatic interlude. Just a matter-of-fact confidence that this was what the Spirit did, and that the sermon still needed finishing. Paul moved through the miraculous with the unhurried, unshakeable composure of someone who had seen enough of God to have calibrated his sense of what was extraordinary.
This calibration, or lack of it, is one of the most revealing indicators of genuine Spirit-empowerment. People who have had limited experience of the Spirit’s miraculous power tend to be either terrified by it or completely undone by awe when it occurs. People who have lived in sustained proximity to the Spirit’s activity develop a different relationship with the miraculous: it remains genuinely wonderful, but it no longer destabilises them. They have simply seen too much of God to be surprised that God does what God does.
The sermon that Eutychus fell asleep during was Paul’s farewell discourse to the Ephesian community before he headed toward Jerusalem. He was talking to people he loved, on his last night with them, aware that he would likely not see them again. The length of the discourse was not carelessness or poor judgment about his audience’s stamina. It was the overflow of a man who had more to say than one evening could contain, poured into the ears of people who genuinely did not want the night to end.
Eutychus, whose name means fortunate, was more than fortunate by the time the night was over. He was alive. And the congregation ate a meal afterward with glad and sincere hearts, which is exactly the phrase Luke used in Acts 2 to describe the early community after Pentecost. The Spirit who filled that upper room in Jerusalem was still filling rooms in Troas, years later, through the same kind of gathered, devoted, unhurried community that had characterised the movement from its beginning.
Today, is there a situation in your life that has been declared dead by everyone present, including, perhaps, by you? Bring it before the Spirit with the same matter-of-fact confidence Paul showed when he went downstairs and threw himself on Eutychus. The last word has not been spoken. His life is in him.
Prayer
Father, calibrate my expectation of you to match what you are actually capable of rather than what I have personally witnessed so far. Let me move through the miraculous with the composure of someone who has simply seen too much of you to be surprised by your goodness. And where something has been declared dead in my situation, let me go to it with the same confidence Paul showed in Troas. In Jesus’ name, amen.
