Lord’s Day, Vol. 5 No. 49

Paul and Silas in Prison

What would you do if you were unjustly thrown into prison? Some would grumble, growl, grouch, grouse, and gripe. Others would fume and fuss, moan and groan.

Paul and Silas were not only cast into prison but were stripped and beaten and severely flogged. They yearned to preach the Gospel. Instead, they were in solitary confinement – beaten and bloody, their feet fastened in tortuous stocks. What could they do?

The account reads: “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.” (Acts 16:25)Why were death-row inmates singing praises instead of the blues? Because God gave them a song that turned them into a duo with a duet in their dungeon. God was the “choir director” that night who provided the sheet music for his two- midnight  minstrels.  Paul  and  Silas  had learned with afflicted Job that “God giveth songs in the night.”

Luke tells us that “the prisoners heard them”. Imagine the hymns resonating down those prison corridors and into each cell! Imagine being able to sing in prison! The record tells us that it was “at midnight.” When you are in excruciating pain, it is not an easy thing to sing a song at midnight. For these two men of God, in their darkest hour, God put a song in their hearts and upon their lips.

This chapter of Scripture gives us one of the most beautiful and dramatic accounts of conversion in the Bible. Suddenly the whole prison was rocked by an earthquake.

Acts 16:26 “And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.”

The jailer, horrified to think that his charges had escaped, a capital offense in Rome, was about to commit suicide. But Paul shouted, “Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.”

Acts 16:29-30 “Then he (the jailer) called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

Acts 16:31-34 “And they (Paul and Silas) said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.”

This story is a memorial to God’s provision of a song in the most painful and difficult of circumstances. In their dark dungeon, as these two missionaries prayed and praised God in song, the gloom around them was dispelled. Are you in dark and difficult circumstances? Whatever your condition, if you pray with a sincere heart, you will find that God gives a song in the night.

Let us find that song and lift our hearts in prayer and praise to him. We too may find that he will change our darkness into light, our suffering into singing, and our problems into praise. Amen.

[Extracted and edited from Songs in the Night by Henry Gariepy]

 Yours Lovingly,

Pastor Lek Aik Wee