For the past couple of months, I have been studying the book of Acts.  I have been reading through slowly–very slowly–with the help of a commentary by John Stott.

This morning, I read about how Paul and Silas were in Philippi when they cast a demon out of a slave girl.  Her owners had been making money off of her ability to predict the future.  With the demon gone, the money was gone, too.  So, the owners dragged Paul and Silas to the city market and brought them before the magistrates.  They wrongfully accused Paul and Silas, had them beaten with rods, and then thrown into jail.

John Stott comments:  “It was a severe flogging, perhaps the first of the three Paul later mentioned, and it was followed by their being thrown into prison, with the instruction to the gaoler to keep them under close guard.  He therefore confined them in the inner cell and in the stocks.  It is wonderful that in such pain, with lacerated backs and aching limbs, Paul and Silas at about midnight were praying and singing hymns to God.  Not groans but songs came from their mouths.  Instead of cursing men, they blessed God.  No wonder the other prisoners were listening to them.”

I know that I have heard this passage from the Bible many times.  I even remember teaching this to my four-year-old Sunday school class.  But I don’t think I ever stopped to consider that the Bible says that the other prisoners were listening to Paul and Silas as they had their twelve o’clock praise session.  And the Bible doesn’t say that the prisoners were heckling Paul and Silas or telling them to shut up so they could get a few miserable hours of sleep.  Instead, it says that they were listening, and I can only imagine what they must have been thinking!

This passage encourages me all the more to glorify God as I encounter trials.  And the thing about trials is that they come in all shapes and sizes–everything from being cut off in traffic to the death of a loved one.  Though we can’t be certain what we will go through from day-to-day, from this account in the Bible, we can be certain of two things:  God always deserves our worship and those who don’t believe are watching and listening.

I hope to be like Paul and Silas.  When I experience tests, I want to sing instead of groan; I want to bless instead of curse.  To the Lord, this is a precious response, and, to the world, it is astonishing.  But, when unbelievers hear us singing in the midnights of our lives, they will have to consider the One who makes us sing.