Songs at Midnight

Paul and Silas came to Lystra — the town where the stones had been thrown. A young disciple lived there named Timothy, whose mother was a Jew who trusted the Lord and whose father was a Greek, and every brother in the district spoke well of him. Paul wanted him along, and took him. They went from town to town handing on what had been decided in Jerusalem, and the gatherings grew firmer and bigger.

Then the road began to close in front of them. They meant to speak in Asia, and the Holy Spirit would not let them. They turned north for Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus would not let them. So they came down to Troas, with the sea in front of them and nowhere to go. And in the night Paul saw a man standing there — a man of Macedonia, from across the water — calling him. “Cross over into Macedonia, and help us.” In the morning they went to find a ship, certain God had called them over to bring the good news.

They ran before the wind to Samothrace, then Neapolis, then up to Philippi, a Roman colony and a leading city of Macedonia. On the Sabbath they went out through the gate down to the river, where they thought there might be a place of prayer, and found women gathered there, and sat down and talked with them. One of them was listening hard. Her name was Lydia, from Thyatira, and she sold purple cloth, the dearest cloth there was. She already worshiped God, and the Lord opened her heart wide to what Paul said. She was immersed that day, and all her household with her. “If you have judged me faithful to the Lord,” she said, “come to my house and stay.” She would not be argued with.

A girl met them every time they walked down to the place of prayer. She was a slave. She told fortunes, a spirit in her driving it, and her owners made a great deal of money out of it. She followed along behind them, shouting. “These men are slaves of the Most High God! They are telling you a way to be rescued!” She did it day after day, until Paul had had enough, and turned round and spoke to the spirit. “I command you, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her.” And it came out of her that hour.

When her owners saw their money had gone out the door with it, they grabbed Paul and Silas and dragged them across the marketplace to the city rulers. “These men are Jews, and they are throwing our city into an uproar,” they said. “They push customs we Romans are not allowed to take up.” The crowd joined in. The rulers had the clothes torn off them and ordered them beaten with rods, and when many blows had been laid on they threw them in prison, telling the jailer to keep them safe. He took that seriously: the inner cell, the one with no window, and their feet in wooden stocks.

So there they were at midnight, in the deepest room of the prison, their backs cut open, their feet held in a block of wood. And they were praying, and singing to God, and the other prisoners lay in the dark and listened. And all at once there was an earthquake, a great one, that shook the prison to its foundations. Every door swung open, and every chain came loose.

The jailer woke. He saw the doors standing open, was certain every prisoner had run and that he would answer for it with his life, and drew his sword. “Do yourself no harm!” Paul shouted out of the dark. “We are all here!” He called for lights, ran in shaking, fell down in front of Paul and Silas, and brought them outside. “Sirs — what must I do to be saved?” “Trust in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved — you and your household.”

So in the middle of the night they told the word of the Lord to him and all his house. And that same hour he washed their wounds — the man who had put their feet in the stocks, washing their backs — and then he was washed himself, he and all his people. He set a table for them upstairs, and the whole household was glad he had come to trust God.

In the morning the rulers sent word that the two could be let go quietly. Paul would not have it. “They beat us in public, without a trial, and we are Romans,” he said. “Let them come themselves and walk us out.” That frightened them badly, and they came and asked them politely to leave the city. The two went to Lydia’s house first, and saw the brothers, and put heart into them, and left.

At Thessalonica, for three Sabbaths, Paul opened the writings in the meeting house and set it out line by line: the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. “And this Jesus I am announcing to you is the Christ,” he said. Some were won over, and a great many Greeks who worshiped God, and quite a few leading women. But others were jealous. They made a mob out of the worthless men around the marketplace and went to Jason’s house for the visitors. The visitors were out, so they dragged Jason in front of the city rulers instead. “These men have turned the world upside down, and now they are here, and Jason has taken them in!” they shouted. “They all act against Caesar’s decrees, and say there is another king — Jesus.” The rulers made Jason put down money as a promise of good behavior, and that night the brothers sent Paul and Silas out of the city.

At Berea the people turned out to be finer stuff. They took the word in gladly — and then checked it. Every day they got the writings out to see whether these things were so. A great many came to trust. Then the men from Thessalonica came to stir up those crowds too, so the brothers put Paul on the road to the sea. Silas and Timothy stayed.

The men with him took Paul as far as Athens and left him there. Walking about that city hurt him. Athens was the most beautiful city in the world, and full of idols — gods on every corner, gods in every doorway. So he reasoned in the meeting house, and in the marketplace with whoever was there. Some of the philosophers argued with him. “What is this seed-picker trying to say?” Others said he seemed to be announcing foreign gods. So they took him up to the Areopagus, the old stone hill where the council met. “May we know what this new teaching is? You are bringing strange things to our ears, and we want to know what they mean.”

So Paul stood up in the middle of the Areopagus. “Men of Athens, I see that you are religious people in every way there is. I was walking through your city looking at the things you worship, and I found an altar with these words cut into it: to an unknown god. What you worship without knowing it — that is the one I am telling you about. The God who made the world and everything in it is Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in buildings made by hands, and is not waited on by human hands as though he needed anything: he gives everybody life and breath and everything else.

“Out of one man he made every nation there is, to live all over the face of the earth, and settled their times and their boundaries — so that they would look for God and feel about for him and perhaps find him. And he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. Some of your own poets have said it: ‘We are his children too.’ If we are God’s children, we ought not to think that what is divine is like gold or silver or stone, shaped by a man’s skill and imagination. God overlooked the times when nobody knew any better. But now he tells everybody everywhere to change their minds, because he has set a day when he will judge the world rightly, by a man he appointed — and he gave everybody proof of it by raising that man from the dead.”

Rising from the dead was where he lost them. Some laughed out loud. “We will hear you about this again,” said others, which in Athens meant no.

So Paul went out from among them. But some came with him and did trust: a man named Dionysius, who sat on that very council, and a woman named Damaris, and others besides. He had spoken in the middle of the cleverest city in the world and been laughed at, and left with a handful of people.