A parenting coach once remarked about curfews: “Nothing good happens after midnight.”

It’s probably good advice since most deviant behavior occurs in the late night hours when shops are closed, streets are empty, and everything is cast in shadow. However, what do you do when it isn’t a curfew you’re discussing but your life? What do you do when you’re in a midnight season of life and no matter how much you look for it you can’t find any evidence of a sunrise?

That’s the state of many people in our country today. From economic woes to international crises to general feelings of instability, a bleak outlook on the future seems to be the norm.

It’s hard to see a lot of good after midnight…unless it’s something like this.

In Acts 16 Paul and Silas found themselves locked in the inner cell of a prison with their feet painfully chained up in the stocks, and in verse 25 it says: “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose.”

That’s a powerful sentence: “About midnight they were praying and singing to God.”

The safest, most powerful place to be at midnight is in the place of worship and prayer. That’s where locked doors burst open, inhibiting chains fall apart, and the darkness of midnight gives way to the morning sun.

Midnight prayer and worship sessions always end with a sunrise.