Acts 20:7-12. When Paul meets up with the disciples in Troas, he intends to only stay a night with them, so he meets and talks with them into the night. They are gathered in a well lit upper room as Paul speaks, and a young man sitting in a window falls asleep as he listens to Paul. The young man falls from the window and is taken for dead, but Paul comes out to him, embraces him, and declares "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." Paul returns to the upper room and converses with the disciples until daybreak, and then he departs. The young man is taken away alive, and all are "not a little comforted."

The way Paul just declares there is still life in the young man and then returns to the upper room to continue his discussion to me seemed at first pretty nonchalant. Paul could almost be accused of not having a lot of empathy for the fear and sadness that those around him must have felt at the boy's presumed death. But Paul did treat the incident with concern. He stopped what he was doing and went down to where the young man lay on the ground. He embraced him with love and care before declaring the young man was still alive and returning to the upper room. Paul was in town for only one night, and had a lot to discuss with and say to these disciples, so once he was sure the young man would be all right, I'm betting his mind went immediately back to what he still needed to discuss. He was not uncaring, he was just prioritizing, and perhaps not dwelling on the man's fall with as much distress as others may have had.

Paul most likely performed a miracle here. He probably embraced the boy, prayed for his healing, believed and trusted that the boy would live, and told the crowd that he was still alive so as not to call attention to what he just did. Luke is a doctor and the one telling this story, but Paul goes to the young man, not Luke. So I think the boy probably was dead, and Paul prayed over him rather than asking Luke to care for him.

I think that we what we are really reading about here is not an abrupt or uncaring Paul, but a humble and faithful one. He so trusted the Lord that he merely had to embrace the young man for him to be brought back to life. Paul knew the importance of his discussion with the disciples, so rather than making a big deal out of the miracle and calling attention to that, he just declared that there was still life left in the man, left him in God's hands, and got back to work.

Sometimes miracles don't look like miracles, and there is a reason for that. But everything is a gift from God, so when our worst fears are quickly allayed, we should thank God and praise him for that mercy (and possible miracle), and then look to what He may be asking us to focus on instead.