Thursday, August 2, 2018
Night songs
Acts 16:25
But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
Somewhere in my neighbourhood, there is a rooster crowing. It means that the night is far spent, the morning is upon us and I am still up working. Where I live there is a unique mix of city life, suburban pretensions, and spilled over countryside. Urban agriculture, including animal rearing, coexists with residential stretches that could only exist here.
But there is also a silence in the night here. We are not near to any highways or major roads, the nearby regional airport slows down to a stop at night and, as a result, there is very little accompaniment to our nocturnal activities and experience.
Somehow though, the night-time serves as a backdrop for a variety of the things that are either ugly or painful. Often sickness comes to us at night, death seems to stalk at night, and violence and crime definitely relish the night.
After 50 years gun crime has come to our community and so, in the middle of the night, you could hear a gunshot loud and clear like it is in your yard though, in reality, it is far away. If you are up at night you could hear the sudden commotion caused by neighbours responding to screams coming from a house where bandits just left. You could hear the sirens of the ambulance and it is so close that you think that it’s coming to your house. And, you could hear the sounds of the mourners sobbing and wailing because a loved one didn’t make it through the night.
The night time is full of anguish, the struggles of the day keep us up at night. The struggles of the past day are like a weight we wish we could set down, and the fears of the coming day we wish we didn’t have to take up.
The night time is the playground of the broken-hearted, the disappointed, the rejected, the abused, the sick, the suffering, the abandoned, and it’s a playground for the imprisoned, those imprisoned in the body as well as those imprisoned in the mind.
The Psalmist David put all of this eloquently in Psalm 6:6 “I am weary with my groaning; All night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with my tears.”
There is a real way to handle to night time though, it’s with songs. If we could just sing, if we could just worship God. When we learn to worship God in the night it helps us through the night. It doesn’t always mean that things change but it certainly means that we do.
The young Elihu told Job that when we are in very difficult circumstances we should humble ourselves before God who has the capacity to transform the night. “Because of the multitude of oppressions they cry out; They cry out for help because of the arm of the mighty. But no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker, Who gives songs in the night,” Job 35:9,10
When the night comes we all need someone to be there with us, to support us, to stand with us. That is not a Christian thing, that’s a human thing. Ben E. King penned lyrics Stand by Me for just that, “When the night has come / And the land is dark / And the moon is the only light we’ll see/ No I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid / Just as long as you stand, stand by me / So darlin’, darlin’, stand by me, oh stand by me / Oh stand by me, stand by me.”
There are songs for the night time, songs of glory, songs of honour, songs of praises unto the King. But often these songs don’t come easily at night. We let the situations and circumstances overwhelm and overcome us. It is easier to cry, to worry and to fear. With these we are familiar.
In our seemingly unrelated key verse today there is a story of Paul and Silas in prison in Philippi at night. There were tough conditions far removed from many of the prison reforms of our day. Poor prison conditions were not just all, the judicial system, if it could be called that, had very few rules as the systems do today. To be caught up, as Paul and Silas were, was to always have your life at risk. No right to an attorney and to proper representation and the like.
On the face of it the situation was bleak, however, they had been there before, in Roman run prisons that is, and every time the disciples were in prison the only real resort they had was to God “who gives songs in the night.”
So, Paul and Silas prayed and then they sang the songs of praise. Clearly, the other hopeless men around them listened because this was the opposite of what they knew about confronting the situation they were in. Rather than wallow in despair they sang, rather than drench the floor with tears they sang, rather than curse they sang.
God, “who gives songs in the night” is faithful to those who have their nighttime song list right. God, will sometimes, in His mercy and grace move heaven and earth, literally, to deliver those who are singing in the night time.
In the street one down from mine, there were several deaths last week. I took the opportunities, late in the nights, to listen to the “songs” of those who gathered at the houses and on the street. Elihu would tell that we hear their anguish and despair “but no one says, ‘Where is God my Maker.”
Their songs were not like those of Paul and Silas in Philippi.
Think on these things:
- How do you handle the night when things around you are difficult?
- How do you sustain hope in God when you feel alone against life’s biggest challenges?
- Does your church offer prayer support to those who find themselves in difficult circumstances?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today for those in our church who are being tormented in the nighttime hours.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex