Night reading · Acts 16:25
Singing at midnight
Paul and Silas in Philippi · Acts 16
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.
Acts 16:25 · King James Version
Midnight, in the inner prison.
Not the ordinary cells — the inner prison, the one further in, without light or air. Their feet are in the stocks. Their backs are open; they were beaten in the market square that afternoon with rods, publicly, without a trial, and the wounds have not been cleaned.
They cannot lie down properly. They cannot turn over. It is the worst night either of them has had.
And at midnight they start to sing.
Not to escape. Not as a technique. There is nothing in the text about them singing in order to make something happen. They sing because it is midnight and they are Christians and singing is what they do.
And the prisoners heard them.
That small line is the one I would keep. Somebody was listening in the dark who had never heard anything like it. Men in that place had heard cursing at midnight, and weeping at midnight, and the silence of people who have given up at midnight. Nobody had ever heard hymns.
You do not always know who is listening to how you handle the worst night.
Then the earthquake. The foundations shake, the doors come open, everybody's chains come loose. The jailer wakes up, sees the open doors, assumes the prisoners are gone, and draws his sword to kill himself — because in Rome, that was what happened to a man who lost his prisoners.
And Paul, whose back is in ribbons, whose door is open, who has every reason and every right to be a mile away already —
shouts into the dark: Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.
We are all here. Nobody ran.
And the man who whipped them that afternoon comes in shaking, and falls down, and asks the only question that matters, and before the sun comes up he has washed their wounds and been baptised with his whole household and set food in front of them in his own house.
One night. Beaten at sunset, singing at midnight, a family saved by breakfast.
So: your midnight.
It may be genuinely unjust. Paul's was — he was a Roman citizen beaten without trial, and he says so the next morning, plainly. Faith did not require him to pretend the wrong was not a wrong.
But there is something available at midnight that is not available at noon. Something gets heard in the dark that daylight drowns out.
You can sing lying down. You can sing badly. You can sing one line of something you half remember.
The prisoners are listening.
And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God.