Reading this put my heart in motion for Thanksgiving. I pray it will do the same for you.
“In the book of Acts we find Paul and Silas serving God and it lands them in the slammer. After being stripped and beaten and handed over to a jailer, he places them in a cell and shackles their feet. And there they sit, in the cramped gloom of the prison house. With throbbing muscles and aching bones. Bruises bloom like dark flowers on their backs and swell like tumors on their faces.
“What would you do? If you were serving God and it landed you in the slammer. Curse, moan, demand? What would you feel? Anger, self-pity, terror? Would you nurse thoughts of vengeance?
“Paul and Silas sing. They pray. They hold church! They rejoice in the suffering. They consider it pure joy to go through trials of many kinds.
“All the while, both prison guards and prisoners listen. Then a miracle happens. An earthquake hits, of such magnitude that the chains fall off the prisoners, all of them and the jail doors fly open, each of them.
“But that’s not the miracle. This is: Just as the jailer who tossed Paul and Silas into that inner cell, who clamped the chains on their ankles, just as he is about to kill himself because he thinks all his prisoners have escaped, a voice rings out of the shadows: “Don’t harm yourself. We are all here!” Acts 16:28
“It’s Paul shouting. We are all here?”
“I can understand that Paul and Silas would stay. I can understand that they would refuse to season opportunity for their advantage if it involved another’s loss.
“But who’s we? Who else has refused to seize this opportunity, to grab freedom through this one narrow window that suddenly opened, soon to shut?
“Who's we? It's the other prisoners. It's those who sat and listened to two men singing in the rain, singing in their pain, praying in their agony—two men who didn’t succumb to the voice of complaint, but instead raised the voice of Thanksgiving!
“Who's we? It's all those who before this instant, never imagined thankfulness as a possible response to life's hardships and injustices. It’s all those who, until this moment, could not conceive of a God so good and so present that he is able to conjure good from evil. It’s all those who were surprised to find, right here in the pit, a God sovereign enough that those who place themselves under his care consider it pure joy when they go through trials of many kinds.
“We are all those who discover, this very night, a God worthy to be praised in all things and for all things.
“The Philippian jailer rushes to Paul and Silas with one question: What must I do to be saved? What must I do to meet the God you know, the God whose love inspires thankfulness no matter what, the God who can subdue the hardest heart, the God who can put into the hearts of captives compassion for their captor?
“Of course, they’re all here. They have just found the God who sets prisoner and prison guard free. So, we practice the presence of God, mostly through thankfulness, until we are utterly convinced of his goodness and sovereignty.” By the ever-amazing, Max Lucado.