Session 17

Can We Sing While Suffering?

From Join the Chorus!

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.” - Acts 16:25

Imagine being falsely accused and thrown in jail. Without due process or a phone call, you are trapped, locked in an inner cell, feet fastened in the stocks. Perhaps you don’t have to imagine because you’ve been there. 

Not all prisons involve a cell. Ask the elderly woman who can no longer care for herself. Or the young dad struggling to make ends meet. Ask the cancer patient who’s spent more days in the hospital than at home. Sit with the person who can’t pray her depression away and the father grieving his son’s death.

They will tell you. A song and a cry are not that different. Both start from the depths of the soul, rising up through the lungs to the vocal cords. Here, they set off a vibration. This tremor in the larynx is the sound that brings walls down. 

A song is a cry set to music. When we feel trapped, we sing to remember who we are. We sing to remember what is real. We sing to recall our place in God’s story. With our voices, we declare what we don’t yet feel: that this is not the end. The king we celebrate on Christmas is ruling and reigning and will come again! 

Let all within us praise His holy Name
Christ is the Lord! Oh praise His name forever! 

Adolphe Adam. O Holy Night. Translated by John S. Dwight. 1847