Good Night Part 1

Good Night Part 1

Acts 16:25 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”

There is nothing more poisonous to my mind, heart, and soul than religion. While I rightfully gasp at the visible evil around me, I am constantly walking into a darkness that on the surface seems so bright. This darkness is religion; systematic standards and ideals that I have set over the course of my life in hopes of drawing God and others closer to me. I want approval. I want to work for my worth. I want to be rewarded for my efforts. And yet, even the rules I have chosen to live by are always beyond reach. I cannot live them out to the degree of my own expectations. And I place these same expectations, this best of burden, on those around me. My rules falsely give me, “the right”, to approve or disapprove of my neighbors, friends, family, coworkers, etc.

The witness to this truth is the fractured pieces of my soul, and the distorted and destructive patterns that gradually separate me from the people that I truly love and the God that truly loves me.

I feel the tremmors, the restlessness, the exhaustion in my life, and often wonder what is happening and why. But, it is difficult to slow down long enough to answer my own question. Maybe it is because the answer is also the unveiling of this illusion called religion; this darkness that seems so bright. It doesn’t work. I can’t pull it off on my own. No matter how hard I try. I have a difficult time admitting that “my” plan failed...again.

So, how in the darkness of night, in the darkness of the inner cell of a prison, having been beaten and locked in shackles, were Paul and Silas able to sing and pray? How were they able to bring joy into walls of captivity? How were they able to bring light into the darkness? What could be powerful enough to release them from their suffering in such a despairing situation? What was it that ignited their voices to sing praises and prayers to God that would echo through the pitch black chambers and move men to listen and not drown them out with cursing and chaos? For a moment the stench, the dampness, the stale air was evaporated and all that was wrong and broken in the men in cages or maybe the cages in these men, was held together as they delighted in the joy of these songs and prayers bouncing off the walls, through the bars, and into their hearts. What ruptured the plan to hold Paul and Silas, to hurt them, to steal their freedom, and interrupt the mission of God to which they had been called?

I don’t think it was religion, but it was certainly a good night..