Whenever I read scripture I always enjoy placing myself in the position of one of the characters. I like to imagine what the scene was like, how people felt and so on. In a way, it makes the stories more real and meaningful. I know that sounds sappy but try it sometime, you'll see what I mean.
One of my favorite stories, and one of my favorite characters, that I enjoy relating to is Eutychus. You may or may not remember this brief story, nestled in Acts, so I'll go ahead and quote it here:
On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. "Don't be alarmed," he said, "He's alive!" Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.
To me, this story just oozes with realness. There were important things to be discussed and not enough time, so what did they do? They talked late into the night. When talking about the word of God, its not hard to go late into the night. And this story condones staying up late, for the right reason of course. That's one thing I like about it, because I'm a habitual late sleeper, and there's a proverb or two that kick my butt every once in a while. Its also real because here we see the first time a preacher put someone to sleep, and this was Paul! So preachers today, or congregants, shouldn't feel too awful bad about an occasional church nap (not that I'm trying to encourage it). And what a typical young man, sitting on the edge of a three story drop-off. Now I know that I'm not the first to do stupid reckless things. And how typical of Paul. As we can tell from his letters, and from the rest of Acts, Paul loved to preach. It really should make us reconsider our rigid, 30 minutes for a sermon, church structure. All in all, what I see in this story is a most real, most genuine church gathering. It wasn't in a fancy building, but probably in whatever building they could use. It wasn't at a specific time or dictated by a time structure. They gathered together in a manner that worked for them.
The other thing I love about this story is the love for God's word that these people display. A willingness, and even a desire I imagine, to spend all night talking about God. They were probably under no obligation to stay there and listen to Paul, Eutychus included. But they did. Eutychus even stayed to the point of falling asleep, and falling out the window. If put in a similar situation, would we want to stay and listen to Paul all night? Would we stay to the point of falling asleep and falling out the window? I pray that we would have the love and desire to hear God's word no matter how late it is, and we can trust the Lord to fix us whenever something happens, like it did with Eutychus.
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