Singing in the dark, in the rubble

There are stories in scripture that feel far away—ancient, dusty, written from a context for which we have to dig for an ability to relate. And then there are stories that are urgent and familiar, even after being handed to us from ages past. Stories that feel messy in ways that our own lives feel messy sometimes. Stories with parts that feel very clear, and others that feel less clear, making our muddling through them to find meaning and understanding to be imperfect, incomplete, maybe even mysterious. Our story from Acts today is one of these stories.

It begins with a girl—unnamed, enslaved, and yet somehow still possessing the clearest voice in the scene. And it ends with a jailer—an agent of empire—washing wounds and preparing a table. It’s a story about liberation. But not the kind that rides in on a white horse. It’s the kind that comes through singing in the dark. Through chains that don’t hold. Through men who don’t run. Through presence that interrupts violence.

Let’s begin with the girl. We’re told she has “a spirit of divination”—some power that lets her tell the future. But she’s not free to use it for herself. Other people own her. They profit from her abilities. Her body, her voice, her spirit—all belong to someone else. She speaks, but she isn’t heard. She sees, but she isn’t seen.

She follows Paul and Silas around the city, calling out—not falsely, not maliciously—but persistently: “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

She names and calls out, rather endlessly, what we might recognize as truth, and yet Paul responds not with affirmation but with exasperation. The text says he was “very much annoyed.” And so, he turns and casts the spirit out of her. His act of liberation doesn’t come with care and compassion, but from annoyance and frustration.

I wonder what it would mean to listen to the voices we’ve dismissed because they made us uncomfortable. I wonder how often we, like Paul, are quick to silence what is persistent, even if it’s speaking the truth.

We’re told that she is healed in that moment. But we’re not told what happens to her after. She vanishes. Liberation came for this woman, but not reconciliation, return to community. This is one of the messy endings in this story—Paul, annoyed or not, sees her as someone worth disrupting the status quo for, but the story moves on, and she does not move with it.

Now, after Paul has relieved the woman of this gift, the owners of this woman are mad—not because she has been liberated, but more specifically because they can now no longer profit off of her, her labor, her spiritual gift.  And so, they have Paul and Silas dragged before the authorities, beaten, and locked in prison.

In prison, their bodies are aching. Their future uncertain. And yet—at midnight—they sing. They sing in the dark. To sing in a place of suffering is to declare that God has not left. It is to claim your full humanity in a place designed to strip it away. This, too, is liberation.

The other prisoners listen to this singing. And then, the earth listens too.

An earthquake shakes the foundations; tears open the doors. The chains fall. The structures that held them—solid, secure—give way.

And they don’t run. They stay. They stay in the place that harmed them. They stay for the sake of someone else’s life.

Because the jailer—the man responsible for containing them—has drawn his sword. In a system like Rome’s, failure has no grace. He’s been made strong by the empire, but he’s not safe. The fear of failure, the shame of collapse, the brutality of the empire’s expectations—they all converge, and he prepares to take his own life. He hears the voice of empire: “If you don’t do your job, you’re disposable.”

But then another voice calls out: “Do not harm yourself. We are all here.”

We are all here. Not just Paul and Silas, but the others too. The ones who had no reason to stay. They stay anyway. The text doesn’t tell us why. But perhaps they sensed that something sacred was happening. Maybe they understood that freedom means more when it’s shared. They stay and in doing so, they offer the jailer a kind of salvation far deeper than his escape.

The jailer calls for light. He falls at the feet of the ones he once locked away. And he asks, “What must I do to be saved?” In this moment, this is not really a theological or logistical question—It is a cry for something more human. Something tender. A different way to live.

Paul and Silas tell him: “Believe in the Lord Jesus.” In response to this, the jailer takes them into his home. He washes their wounds. He feeds them. And they baptize him—and his whole household.

The one who bound now tends. The one who wounded now serves. The one who enforced the system now disrupts it, with water and bread and welcome.

And yet, we can’t forget the girl. She’s not at that table. Her liberation didn’t end with a hymn or a feast. We don’t know what happened to her. But we know her voice spoke truth. What does her story, as unresolved as we receive it, reveal to us about salvation?

In this text, salvation is not transactional. It is not a single moment or a uniform experience. Salvation is not just what God does for individuals. It is what God does among us—disrupting injustice, creating unlikely kinship, planting seeds of wonder or concern for those whose story we don’t hear, calling us to stay with one another through the earthquakes.

So what do we do with all this?

Because, to be honest, we live in a world full of systems that still bind and use people. We live in a world that still profits off people’s pain. A world where women’s voices are dismissed until they are convenient, and then silenced once they are not.  Where people are valued only for what they produce. A world where jails and detention centers still break spirits. Where people are afraid to fail. Where people look powerful but are exhausted inside. A world where the systems that confine us are often hidden behind rules, respectability, and good intentions.

And yet.

There are still midnight songs. Still trembling ground. Still people who stay. Still tables set with bread and wounds washed in water. Still voices crying out for liberation.

This is not a story with neat edges. It is messy. It doesn’t tell us exactly what to do. But it invites us to wonder:

Who are we listening to? Who have we left behind? Where have we been so annoyed that we forgot to be compassionate? When have we stayed—for love, for justice, for someone else’s healing? And where are the earthquakes in our own lives—the places where the ground is shifting and something freer is trying to emerge?

There is a holiness in this mess. In the girl’s cry. In the prisoners’ hymn. In the jailer’s trembling hands. This is a story of God’s freedom, breaking through systems that do not want to let go. As followers of Christ, we might not be able to tear down every system, fix every injustice, or heal every wound. But we can stay. We can sing. We can show up in the middle of the night and say, “Don’t harm yourself. We’re still here.”

Because the gospel isn’t always a door flung wide. Sometimes it’s a song in the dark. Sometimes it’s a voice that won’t be silenced. Sometimes it’s the decision not to run. Sometimes it’s the courage to stay.

Amen.