Thanks to Google Images for the picture.
I don’t suppose it would be very much fun being locked up in a dungeon, would you? As a matter of fact I can’t think of one thing pleasant about it. Just listening to the background noises would be quite disturbing to say the least. Hear all that screaming? Without a doubt someone is getting a beating with far more stripes than most crimes could ever warrant. Then of course there is the bitter quarreling, curses and terrible groans of agony…and the mean, nasty, long teethed rats…
Enough for the sounds: what about the smells? Maybe we shouldn’t even go there, it reeks like, like an old fashioned outhouse . Enough said, right, because there are people living in that filth.
There’s plenty of prisoners confined tonight in those dreadful quarters and it is pitch dark. No one can see their hand, even if they put it right in front of their face. That is enough miseries right? But things are about to get worse. The whole stone building begins to tremble and shake, and this is in the black of night, mind you. All other sounds are drowned out by the blood curdling screams of a hundred captives.
When the ruckus dies down a bit, the strangest sound can be heard. It is of singing. Singing? In a dungeon? In the dark of night? During an earthquake? Yes, and it was as soothing as a canary’s melody in a coal mine.
Who are those singing under such dire circumstances? It is Paul and Silas., not that you can see them, mind you, but they are the two confined by stocks.
I also am confined against my will. It is the prison of my flesh which urges me to do things I really shouldn’t, and makes it difficult to soar like an eagle to heights of power and victory in Jesus like I long to. Someday my chains also will be loosened and so, meanwhile I can sing in prison!
Acts 16:23-26
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