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Acts: 16: 22-34
The crowd in Philippi joined in the attack on Paul and Silas,
and the magistrates had them stripped
and ordered them to be beaten with rods.
After inflicting many blows on them,
they threw them into prison
and instructed the jailer to guard them securely.
When he received these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell
and secured their feet to a stake.
About midnight, while Paul and Silas were praying
and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened,
there was suddenly such a severe earthquake
that the foundations of the jail shook;
all the doors flew open, and the chains of all were pulled loose.
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open,
he drew his sword and was about to kill himself,
thinking that the prisoners had escaped.
But Paul shouted out in a loud voice,
“Do no harm to yourself; we are all here.”
He asked for a light and rushed in and,
trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas.
Then he brought them out and said,
“Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”
And they said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus
and you and your household will be saved.”
So they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to everyone in his house.
He took them in at that hour of the night and bathed their wounds;
then he and all his family were baptized at once.
He brought them up into his house and provided a meal
and with his household rejoiced at having come to faith in God.
The Word of the Lord.
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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 the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Silas have been humiliated, stripped in public, and beaten with rods.
Now they’re imprisoned and chained to the ground deep inside the bowels of the earth. Why are they joyfully singing songs to God at midnight?
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Paul and Silas have discovered a higher freedom, one that cannot be chained – the freedom of knowing Jesus Christ.
This is a great, almost original, Pauline insight – that in the midst of suffering, there is always the consolation of the Spirit; there is grace.
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“Those who wish to sing always find a song.”
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While we may never know the darkness of imprisonment, we’ve all endured various trials – dryness in prayer, periods of grief, sickness, anxiety, isolation, or frustration.
But Paul and Silas remind us, there is always a reason to be joyful, there is always a reason to sing.
As Paul later writes, “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? … No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.”
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Those who wish to sing always find a song.
So, what song will you sing to God today?
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Image credits: (1) Breslov Research Institute (2) Communion Chapel (3) Amazing Grace, John Newton