The Lesson of Eutycus

 Can you fix what you break?

⁷ On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. ⁸ There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. ⁹ Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. ¹⁰ Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” ¹¹ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. ¹² The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.

“I didn’t mean to break it.”  “Now that doesn’t really matter, does it?”  I’ve often had this exchange with my beloved granddaughter after a clumsy, inattentive moment brought some item into useless, irreparable pieces on the floor.  It is not meant to disparage or demean and she knows it.  The purpose of the statement has nothing to do with the broken item and she knows it.  We’ve discussed it before. 

Often, if I see her headed for one of those disasters, I will say “If you break it, will it matter that you didn’t mean to?”  It is an effort to bring her actions into the conscious realm and make her more aware of consequences for thoughtless behavior.  I hope it has an even greater long term effect than to protect my or her pretties from breakage.

Let me interject here that I am fully aware that things are not as important as people.  Nothing I have is as important to me as that blue-eyed wonder times 20.  My grandchildren are eternally precious to me.  For years my motto was “It’s only stuff!”  There is a reason why stuff loses value as soon as you buy it.  It is meant to be replaced.  But I saw a problem with thoughtless action and set out to do my part in making their world a better place.

Eutychus had no clue when he sat down in that 3rd story window that it could be the last night of his life.  I can’t blame him for dozing off.  I’m not good at sitting in one place and listening to even a television program without drifting off.  I carry a sketchbook so I can stay awake and listen in the church service.  But what if I knew it would be my last night on earth?  Well, I’d have a hard time sitting still for sure, but I wonder if I might just be a little more cautious of my actions.

Often we rush headlong into a discussion or a situation without giving thought to what we might ‘break’.  I had a horrid nightmare a few years back.  I was trying to help this young child who could not walk and nothing was working and I cut off the child's leg.  Standing there in horror at what I had just done, I said 'How am I going to fix this?"  It was a disturbing dream and I woke unsettled and full of questions.  In the end, I realized some profound truth in the considerations.  Among those concepts discovered was the question "Can we mend or heal in the event that we wound or destroy?"  Paul rushed down and covered the boy.  He took him up alive and people were comforted.  I imagine the boy didn’t sit back down in the window for the rest of Paul's discourse and it says the people in that crowd were ‘greatly comforted.’  But what impact do you suppose the event might have carried into the days ahead.

For me, each time I warn my granddaughter, it is a warning to myself: “Consider the outcome of your actions.”  I still make impulsive mistakes.  I still break things thoughtlessly, so does she.  Yet sometimes I hear her say to herself “Be careful,” or “Slow down,” and I wonder if in her mind the thinks “If I break it the fact that I didn’t mean to will not make it unbroken.”

Now, if we can carry that outside the realm of trinkets, toys and dishes.