Here’s something odd and wonderful. Tonight at the vespers service, we commemorated the Seven Sleepers Of Ephesus. Huh? Matthew whispered to me, “That sounds like a Ray Bradbury story.”
Have you heard of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus? I have never heard of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. When we made it home, we looked up the story online. The Seven Sleepers were young third-century Ephesian Christians who were facing the prospect of martyrdom under the pagan Emperor Decius. According to the legend, they hid in a cave on a nearby mountain, praying and waiting to be taken away and murdered for refusing to honor the pagan gods. Later, when Decius returned to Ephesus, he ordered the cave sealed by a rock, with the young men inside. Nearly 200 years later, after the empire had become Christian, the owner of the land where the cave was had the rock moved, and discovered that the young men had been sleeping for all that time. The story goes that the Seven Sleepers appeared in the city, said what happened to them, were seen by many, then died. The detailed account of the miracle is here.
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