There is a football (soccer for the American audience) team in Europe who have a tradition of singing the song ‘You will never walk alone’. I am not sure about the details of the song, but I have always subscribed to that view for men. Men should not walk alone. We need to grow in the context of community and fellowship.

I was recently reminded of this at a breakfast for men. It was aptly called a ‘Brotherhood Breakfast’. The speaker, a minister called Dino Rizzo, brought his message from the book of Acts 20. It was the story of Eutychus and how he fell out of the window in the middle of a ‘kesha’ or night vigil. Interestingly, Eutychus means fortunate. Ill-fortune fell upon the fortunate one. This is such a paradox. Again, life can be a paradox at times.

I’m sure this text has been used many times to remind attendees why they should not fall asleep at keshas. However, the speaker had deeper insights on the same:

1. We need to pay attention lest we fall asleep at the wheel. It was so easy for Eutychus to fall asleep, after all it was the middle of the night and he probably had had a long day. Sometimes life throws men challenges. You lose a job, or a business deal goes south, or your relationships are not working out as well as you expected. In these dark seasons, it is so easy to fall asleep. It is in those seasons that you need to pay attention.
2. The older one gets, the easier it is to fall asleep. There are times when our media carries pictures of politicians asleep at political engagements. Most of the time, these politicians are on the elderly side of life. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to be faithful to your spouse in the early years of your marriage? With time, things change and one may be tempted to look across the fence because ‘the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence’. The older you get, the easier it is to fall asleep. The routine nature of life lends itself to sleeping at the wheel. Stay alert!
3. The older you get, the harder it is to bounce back from a fall. Over the years I have seen a number of young ministers who fell into sin, and somehow got their lives sorted out and came out of this without even the smell of smoke. It is easier to bounce back when you fall as a young person (and I am not encouraging anyone here to take a plunge). As one gets older, this changes. I’m not sure whether it is that society is less forgiving of an older Christian that makes a mistake. Maybe the expectation is that you should know better. Even life tells us that breaking a bone at twenty is different from breaking a bone at fifty. Break a bone at 50, and you might never fully recover.

What is my message here? Don’t walk alone, especially if you’re a man. Women are more relational than men and tend to be more honest about their feelings and where they are. Men want to make it look like all is well, while our inner worlds are falling apart. Don’t walk alone.

Find someone, a friend, a mentor, a fellowship, where you can go and just be yourself. A place where there is no pressure to perform. A place that will not condemn you for your weaknesses, but will inspire you to run faster and fly higher.

Make this a resolution for 2023, I will not walk alone.