Acts 20 | Encouragement in GoodbyesSample

The Long Goodbye

Saying goodbye to close friends is difficult, especially when you don’t know if or when you’ll see them again. Times like these often involve reminiscing about your time spent together – the good times, but also the struggles you walked through together – and the plans for what’s ahead. Goodbyes often include words of encouragement and blessings. No matter how much time you had, it would never be enough.

Paul is experiencing the same thing in Troas. He is saying goodbye.

Just before he plans to leave, he worships and breaks bread with the other disciples one last time. Knowing that he would be departing the next day, he continued to talk until midnight. Goodbyes can be like that. There’s so much to say, and not enough time. You want to take advantage of every moment still remaining.

In this case, Paul talked so long that a young man named Eutychus fell asleep and fell to his death out of a third-story window!

Look at what happens next.

“Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘He’s alive!’ Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted” (Acts 20:10-12, NIV).

The story is almost funny, if it weren’t so amazing. Through Paul, Jesus raises this young man back to life! And Paul’s response? To go on speaking until daylight! (Not even death could get this young man out of a long goodbye.) In perhaps one of Acts greatest understatements, the people were “greatly comforted.”

There’s something subtle here. This death would not end in goodbye.

With Jesus, it’s never really goodbye. Whether it’s moving, changing schools, the last time seeing someone, or even in death, for those of us in Christ, “goodbye” is never the last chapter of the story. We live in what the Apostles’ Creed calls a “communion of saints.” Bound together in Christ across all time and space. At times separate, but never fully separated. Because in Jesus, the day will finally come when we will be resurrected and reunited.

You’ll face goodbyes. Some will be longer than others. When you do, take heart. If you are in Christ, it is not permanent. And he is coming again. Then, goodbyes will be no more. So as Paul says, “Encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess 4:18, NIV).