When waking up is simply the best! 
Acts, #73. Acts 20.1-12
The night was warm, the flickering lights mesmerizing from his cozy perch. The teenager was tired and upon growing rather comfortable with the speaker’s cadence, closed his eyes just for a moment. It felt so good, one moment led to another and then suddenly he tumbled three stories to his death. Dang. Rough night.
Now certainly I have had people fall asleep when I have been teaching… it is always humbling, but I reason to myself that they mustn’t have slept well, just aren’t feeling quite right, etc. But in this case, it seems like fate avenged Paul as the sleeper fell to his death!
Do not worry, do not fret. God was not caught off guard--nor is he ever! [perhaps you need to dwell upon that truth a moment: God is never, no never, caught off guard] As we have seen throughout the marvelous adventure of the book of Acts, when the people of God gather and the Word of God is preached, God oft comes to do the miraculous.
This time was no exception. Paul pulled an Elijah and the boy was revived. Isn’t that just like God? If not for God, sleep would have been fatal.
Thinking about that - I am wondering how many of us are asleep right now. We fall into our busy-ish lives, trying to plow through our competing thoughts, stay on top of life and its commensurate challenges and fail to notice that we are kinda’ sleepwalking. Of course, we have cut ourselves a break about that because, well you know, ‘this Covid thing is hard!’ Please.
To which I say, consider once again Paul. He never missed an opportunity to share the message of true life with any he met! When his way had to be diverted because of death threats up ahead, he did not miss the opportunity to gather with other believers, break bread with them and teach them more about what life could be like, what life was like when they lived fully for Jesus!
In writing his letter to the church at Ephesus, to those he held so dear, he said, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”1 Did he have Eutychus (the lad who fell from the window) in mind when he quoted Isaiah?2 Or did he have you and me in mind?
I want to be fully awake
I wish to be fully alive
I wish to see Jesus.
Ah, yet another discipline to practice. The discipline of being fully awake to the goodness of God all around us and the need of our fellow man to know him.
When someone hints at your Christian belief, can you say what you believe and why it is the driving force in your life? O, I hope so.
Perhaps you need first to wake up and remember - you have been given the gift of life, twice over. The gift of life and breath, and then forever, the gift of life eternal with the Lord when you have chosen to follow Jesus Christ as your Savior. How precious! Do not miss a minute of it.
Waking up is wonderful!
Christine
PastorWoman.net
1 - Ephesians 5.14
2 - Isaiah 51.17
3 - 1 Kings 17.21-22
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