Listen

When Paul and Silas had been severely beaten, the authorities threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to secure them with great care. When he received these instructions, he threw them into the innermost cell and secured their feet in stocks.

Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. All at once there was such a violent earthquake that it shook the prison’s foundations. The doors flew open and everyone’s chains came loose. When the jailer awoke and saw the open doors of the prison, he thought the prisoners had escaped, so he drew his sword and was about to kill himself. But Paul shouted loudly, “Don’t harm yourself! We’re all here!”

Acts 16:23-28

Think

Sometimes water flows gently, staying between the banks of a riverbed. But sometimes water thunders over the banks, carving new paths through the ground, rushing senselessly and eroding all the places that are stable. The Living Water is the same. Sometimes it flows peacefully within us and soothes us with its gentleness, but other times it erupts underneath us, shifting everything in its wake.

The Living Water caused the earth to shake and rumble, releasing Paul and Silas and their fellow prisoners from their chains, but the men did not escape. Any sensible man might have run. Instead they stayed where they were, saving the life of a man who had been charged with ensuring their suffering, not their protection.

Imagine the kind of world the jailer lived in, where a failure like this would be so costly that death seemed the reasonable response. But God’s work was not reasonable in this case. Its unreasonableness created a new possibility of life, not only for Paul and Silas, but for their jailer.

Ellen Di Giosia

Pray

Oh Living Water, save me from my need for you to act in reasonable ways.

Let me be awake and open to the unreasonable paths you might take for me and in me.

Amen.

Go

Did you hear it?

The Living Water, rushing all around and flowing into the ocean of God?

Follow it there, and immerse yourself in God’s love.