Pleasant Stone Devotional Meditation: October 26

“And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead. And Paul went down and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him” ~ Acts 20:9-10

All real humor comes from God. I [Eugenia Price, the author] am convinced that God is overpoweringly in favor of laughter. Only those who have experienced the holy hilarity of the saints of God as against the hysterical hilarity of the world, know the tremendous difference between the laughter of heaven and the laughter of earth. In this “green stone” is heavenly humor. Paul preached so long, a sleepy fellow named Eutychus “drifted off” and then down from a third floor window!

As people do, they gathered around the prostrate body of the boy and “he was taken up dead.” They didn’t just think he was dead. He was. The accident stopped Paul’s dissertation, but it gave him one more chance to prove that we can give thanks for all things. To prove that the Lord to whom he was a bond-slave, was at that moment a redeemer, “Paul went down, and fell on him, and embracing him said, Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him.”

What might have happened had Paul been insulted at the boy’s falling asleep in the middle of his lengthy sermon? God would still have had the power to bring the boy to life, but could that power have gotten through Paul if he had been suddenly filed up with wounded pride? Paul might have gone through the same procedure with the boy, but nothing might have happened further. A tragedy would have been left a tragedy. And there would have been no rejoicing and no holy laughter in heaven or on earth. As it was, Paul was even able to finish his sermon! “Paul talked for a long while, even till break of day.”

“And they brought the young man alive, and were not a little comforted.”