Wednesday, March 18th

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Wednesday, March 18

Acts 16: 25-27

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them...

I’ve never been in prison but over the years I’ve had several opportunities to play basketball with men who were incarcerated.

From what I could tell, prisons are not happy places. No one wants to be there; no one is happy to be there; everyone wants to be somewhere else. There is an unspoken desperation and sadness that permeates the air.

I can only imagine that it was a hundred times worse in an ancient Roman dungeon.

In the earlier part of Acts 16 we are told that Paul had come upon a young woman who had been troubled by a demon and who was being exploited for money by unscrupulous men. He set her free from demonic oppression by the name of Jesus and she was restored to her right mind. But her “handlers” lost their source of income and were enraged at Paul and Silas. They dragged them before the local magistrate and accused them of disrupting the city. Paul and Silas were then beaten with rods and thrown in jail without a trial or a chance to defend themselves. Some historians believe that the beating itself was sometimes enough to kill some men.

So here they are; trying to obey and serve God by taking the great good news of Jesus to the Gentile world! They have left everything behind for this great purpose; and this is what they get?

If I try put myself in their shoes, even remotely, I think I would struggle to keep myself from self pity or even bitterness. If I prayed at all I probably would find myself complaining to God:

What have I done to deserve this?

Why is this happening to me?

In case you haven’t noticed God, I could use a little help here?

But that’s not what we see from Paul and Silas.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God...

Some years ago, when I was a Youth Pastor, I led a number of short term trips involving high school students to the Dominican Republic. On one of those trips we were working in a small mountain village to help build a care-center for the impoverished children of that area, and conditions were quite primitive by our North American standards.

We slept in sleeping bags on a concrete floor. Daytime temperatures pushed 100 degrees and even the nights were sweltering. To bathe each day we either dumped buckets of water on our heads or walked a mile to the local river to wash off the day’s sweat and grime.

One morning I woke up very early, about 5 am, primarily because I just couldn’t sleep anymore due to the combined effect of the concrete floor and the crowing of dozens of roosters. So I got up and made my way to the roof of the building hoping it would be a little cooler there. As I sat on a concrete block watching the village come to life in the early dawn, I became aware of a sound other than the roosters.

It was the sound of a woman’s voice; and she was singing.

I looked around at the tiny cinder block and corrugated tin homes below trying to find the source of the singing. Then I saw her...a young mother who was already at work sweeping the dirt that served as her “back yard.”

I had seen her earlier in the week caring for 3 or 4 very young children. I had seen her washing clothes in the river and carting them back on her head to the village. I remember thinking that I couldn’t begin to imagine how difficult life was for that young woman.

I watched her sweep and listened to her sweet voice; then I realized that I recognized the tune she was singing. I listened more closely and I heard the Spanish words:

“Mi corazon entona la cancion; Cuan grande es El, cuan grande es El...”

My Spanish wasn’t great but I knew what those words meant:

“Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee; How great thou art, how great thou art.”

She was singing the great hymn of praise, “How Great Thou Art”; she was singing hymn of praise at 5:30 in the morning as she wept the dirt behind her one room tin house in the Dominican Republic.

I just sat and listened; moved deep in my soul by such faith, such gratitude, such joy. I kept thinking, “How can someone who has so little have so much gratitude?”

Then it hit me that gratitude has nothing to do with how much we have; rather, it has everything to do with the condition of our hearts.

That woman’s heart was full of gratitude because it was full of God.

Paul and Silas sang midnight hymns in prison because their hearts were full of God.

What is your heart full of today?

Pastor Brian Coffey