Saturday, August 12: “Stare Death in the Face–Literally”
Acts 20: 9, 10: “There was a young man named Eurychus sitting on the window sill, sinking into a deep sleep; and as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead. But Paul went down and fell upon him, and after embracing him, he said, ‘Do not be troubled, for his life is in him.’”
After the first recorded case of death by homily (not to say that there were not others that had gone unrecorded), it would have been easy for St. Paul to run downstairs, head down the alley to the dock, and set sail for Assos ASAP. Not Paul. He threw himself upon poor Eutychus, who probably never again fell asleep in church. We laugh, but it took courage to admit the problem and seek to amend it. The Lord always responds to courage like that.
