I suppose every preacher has shared the first part of Paul’s experience – having someone doze off during a sermon that went a little too long. And as a high-school teacher, I’ve had my share of sleepy students, especially during those after-lunch class periods.

But if the first part of this passage is all too familiar, the last three verses certainly are not. Eutychus’ life came back into him when Paul held him close? If God did something like that, then why doesn’t He do it all the time? Why doesn’t God bring all our loved ones back to us in the way that Paul raised Eutychus from the dead?

Well, why did Paul have to go on talking so late into the night in the first place? It turns out he couldn’t stay in Troas very long because the unbelieving Jews were plotting against him (Acts 20:3). In fact, later in this same chapter, Paul told the people in Ephesus that bonds and afflictions were awaiting him in Jerusalem (Acts 20:23).

So, if God could use Paul to raise Eutychus from the dead, why couldn’t the same power keep all those plots against Paul from succeeding? We simply don’t know. We don’t know why God sometimes chooses to pour out His healing and protecting power and sometimes He doesn’t. We don’t know because we are not God. We are not in control. We can’t see the whole picture. We can’t understand how both blessings given and blessings withheld can serve to increase God’s glory and to bring us great good.

In short, we are left exactly where Eutychus and his family and Paul and all his friends were: having to trust in God. We pray for our friends and loved ones to be healed and protected. We rejoice when, like in the case of Eutychus, God answers our prayers. And we submit to God’s will when suffering and death are part of His plan. For after all, the God we trust was willing to suffer and die for us so that we might be blessed and healed, and so that one day we’ll all experience the joy of the resurrection that Eutychus and his family experienced on that night in Troas. So even if we can’t always understand Him, we can trust a God Who is that powerful, and yet that loving.

Acts 20:7-12 (NAS)

7 And on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to depart the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.
8 And there were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered together.
9 And there was a certain young man named Eutychus 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.
10 But Paul went down and fell upon him and after embracing him, he said, “Do not be troubled, for his life is in him.”
11 And when he had gone back up, and had broken the bread and eaten, he talked with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed.
12 And they took away the boy alive, and were greatly comforted.