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There’s an old Swedish proverb: “Those who wish to sing always find a song.”
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In our first reading from Acts, Paul and Silas have been humiliated, stripped in public, and beaten with rods.
Now they’re imprisoned; chained to the ground in the bowels of the earth, singing songs to God at midnight.
Paul and Silas were nearly killed. But instead of cowering in fear, they sing.
This description of persecution and imprisonment represents a constant theme in the Book of Acts: The Church meets trouble.
And while trouble abounds, there’s always the consolation of the Spirit.
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Those who wish to sing, even while bruised in prison, always find a song.
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After Paul and Silas break out in song, the belly of the earth begins to shake, freeing them from their cell. But they do not flee. They stay and convert the prison guard, instead.
Paul reveals to the guard a higher freedom, a freedom that cannot be chained; the freedom of belief in Jesus Christ.
It is he who gives us strength when we cannot find it ourselves.
This is a great, almost original, insight of Paul – that even in the midst of suffering, there is grace.
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“Those who wish to sing always find a song.”
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Hopefully we’ll never know the darkness of imprisonment as Paul and Silas did, but we’ve all endured various trials – dryness in prayer, periods of grief, sickness, unemployment, frustration.
Like these first Christians, we can always find a song, even at midnight, for the same God of consolation is with us.