In today’s passage, Paul and his entourage are visiting Troas, which is in modern-day Turkey. On their final night, they meet with the other Christians there, and the writer, Luke, reports that Paul preached until midnight. As it grows later, a young man sitting on a windowsill falls asleep – quite literally. He tumbles out of the window and drops two floors to his death. Paul goes outside, holds the young man in his arms, pronounces him alive; then, as if nothing has happened, everybody goes back upstairs and they share communion.

This is actually one of my favourite stories in the whole of the Bible, for two reasons: firstly, it’s a rather funny story as I’m sure many of us will reluctantly admit to having dozed off during a sermon at one point in our lives! More than that, though, it’s a beautiful example of God’s grace in our weaknesses. For the young man in the story, his (understandable) moment of weakness was falling asleep while Paul was preaching; he would have paid dearly for it were it not for God’s compassion, restoring his life and leaving him unharmed.

To me, this is the story of our redemption. Is this not the perfect illustration of our lives? As Christians, we try. We largely know what we should and shouldn’t do, and why. We can be having the best day and feel so close to God, but a single moment of weakness – a slip of the tongue, an absent-minded uncharitable thought, brushing off someone who needs us – can leave us feeling flat. That’s us, dropping off to sleep and falling out of the window. Without Jesus, that would be the end of the story.

Thankfully though, we’re not left lying on the road outside – Jesus took our final consequence. He went to the cross, meaning that we don’t have to experience the shame, pain, taunting, rejection and the death that he did, and most importantly, so that we don’t have to be separated from God in the same way he was in the last moments of his life, but instead, we can get up from the road and go back inside the house.

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Jesus, thank you for the sacrifice you made. Thank you for the example of this story. I’m sorry for the times I get it wrong and ask you to help keep me strong when I feel weak.