Songs From the Wreckage

On September 19, 2017, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake leveled entire neighborhoods in Mexico City. Rescue workers clawed through pancaked concrete for days, listening for any sign of life beneath the rubble. At one collapse site on Alvaro Obregon Street, the crews fell silent to listen — and heard something extraordinary. A woman trapped beneath three floors of debris was singing hymns. Her name was Maria Elena Medina, and for nearly thirty hours she sang worship songs in the darkness, pinned between slabs of concrete she could not move. When rescuers finally pulled her free, one paramedic said through tears, "We followed her voice to find her."

That is the picture Luke paints for us in Acts 16. Paul and Silas sit in the innermost cell of a Philippian prison, backs torn open by Roman rods, feet locked in wooden stocks — and at midnight, they sing. Not quietly. Not under their breath. They sang loudly enough that every prisoner heard them.

Their chains did not fall off because they sang. They sang because they already possessed a freedom no jailer could lock away. And when the earthquake came and the doors flew open, the one who thought he held the keys discovered he was the one truly imprisoned. "What must I do to be saved?" the jailer cried.

Sometimes the Almighty shakes the foundations. But first, He asks us to sing in the dark.