Children’s Devo: The Guy Who Fell Out of A Window

Have you ever been in church and felt very, very sleepy?  I have.  It was hard to keep my eyes open, even though I wanted to hear what the preacher was telling us.  When you get really sleepy, you might try and try to stay awake, but find that you just can’t.

That’s what happened to a young man (maybe a teenager) in the Bible.  His name was Eutychus.  He was listening to the apostle Paul preach in an upper room in the third story of a building in Troas.  Paul was going to leave Troas the next day, and he must have had a lot that he wanted to teach the Christians who were gathered together that evening.  Maybe he knew he wouldn’t see them again and wanted to tell them everything he could before he left.

Eutychus was sitting in a window.  Maybe it was so crowded that he couldn’t find a seat.  Or maybe it was hot and stuffy in that upper room that he was trying to get some fresh air to keep him awake.  Back in the Bible days they did not have fans or air conditioners.  The highest rooms in a house can get pretty hot and stuffy on a warm evening!

Paul kept preaching and preaching, and it was late  – in fact, it was midnight!  I don’t know how long Eutychus had been sitting there listening to Paul, but it might have been for hours.  He was getting sleepier and sleepier!

In Acts 20:9 we read that he was “sinking into a deep sleep.”  In other words, he had gone past the point of struggling to keep his eyes open and was now falling sound asleep as he sat there in the open window.

All of a sudden, something terrible happened!  Eutychus, who by now was really asleep, slumped backwards and fell right out of the window!  He was three stories up, so it was a long fall.  We can imagine that people were screaming and running down the stairs, knowing that the fall was so far down that Eutychus would likely be dead.  They were right.  When they got to his body, they found he had died.

Paul ran down the stairs also and threw himself on top of Eutychus and hugged him.  I’m sure people were moaning and crying.  Paul said something shocking:  “Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him.”   After Paul said these words, he calmly got up and went back inside and had something to eat, talking to people until morning.  He didn’t act very upset.  People might have wondered how he could just go back to talking and eating after such a terrible thing had happened.

But Paul had faith in Jesus.  He knew that Jesus has the power to raise people from the dead and to heal them.  So after he had spoken his words of faith, he must not have felt like he had to hang around to see what would happen.  I’m sure that at least Eutychus’s family stayed with him, or maybe even carried his body back home.

Guess what happened next!  Eutychus came alive and visited Paul in the morning before he left town.  Acts 20:12 says, “They brought the young man in alive.. ” You would think that he would be hopelessly injured from the terrible fall. But Eutychus didn’t get carried in, and didn’t come in all smashed up and crippled.  He had been both raised from the dead and healed!

Jesus is great and powerful!  He wants us to believe Him for miracles just like Paul did.  Some people think that Jesus does not do miracles like this any more, but there are many, many reports from around the world of people being healed and being raised from the dead.  Watch this video of a boy from Africa who was raised from the dead!

We certainly serve a mighty God!