Songs in the Night

(Wrote this article for the Souvenir published by the Sharjah CSI church in 2005)

On a cold December night, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary was returning home with his two junior school sons Philip and Timothy. He worked for the lepers and the downtrodden in the rural provinces of Orissa in India. Suddenly, a mob appeared. They stopped the van and set fire to it. Graham Staines and his little sons were burnt alive.

This shocking incident became the main news story in both the print and visual media. "Missionary and his sons burnt alive" shrieked the newspapers. On the front page of the newspapers was another small news item."I forgive them" it said. Those were the words of Mrs.Gladys Staines,the wife of Graham Staines.

The visual media showed the charred remains of the van and also the lamentation of the people whom Staines served.The TV news channels transmitted excerpts of the funeral service of the three Christian martyrs. During the funeral service, Gladys Staines and her 13-year old daughter Esther sang:

Because He lives, I can face tomorrow,
Because He lives all fear is gone,
Because I know, He holds the future
Life is worth the living just because He Lives!

In the darkest hour of their lives, it was a song of praise and faith which emanated out of lips of the mother-daughter duo. It was a song in the night! Though it might have seemed that God had forsaken them, they still reposed their trust in Him. Gladys and Esther were not cowed down by this great personal catastrophe. They travelled the length and breadth of India declaring their faith in God. They also continued the legacy of Graham Staines by reaching out to the poor and needy just as Staines did. Their response to the tragedy and their unwavering faith in God were eye-openers to all the slumbering-armchair Christians. Gladys and Esther, like the Psalmist," remembered their songs in the night"

“Songs in the night” means praising God even in the most sorrowful moments of our life. Paul, David and even Christ himself endured many hardships but they did not give up on God. Surely if it were one of us facing such sufferings, we would have stopped believing in the veracity of God. However, stalwarts like Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego said the following words when they were about to be thrown in the fiery furnace, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it and he will rescue us. But even if he does not, we want you to know, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have." The rest is history.

Shadrach, Mesach and Abednego’s response to sufferings led to a lot of people respecting their religion. Our responses to situations are a reflection of our relationship with God. Are we conscious that people are watching us to know about our God? Do our responses mirror our relationship with God? Do we thank and praise God even before our work is done? Do we face adversities with a song of praise on our lips?

We all sing. We can at least vouch to be "Bathroom singers". We sing praises when we are joyful. But the bible reiterates about praising God during tempestuous times. Upon scrutinizing the lives of the biblical heroes, we realize that they became "heroes of faith" or "a cloud of witnesses" because of their faith in God. They did not stop praising God when the going was tough. Therefore" God was not ashamed to be called as their God"-Hebrews11:16.

Christ exhorts us to worship and praise God in truth and spirit. We cannot let our "mood swings", "job", "studies"," tuitions", ”coaching classes” affect our relationship with God. When we praise God in the gloomiest times of our life, we are re-affirming our faith in the omniscience and omnipotence of God. The interesting paradox, however, is that we can produce melody in trying circumstances only if we have faith. Therefore the bottomline is we can sing "songs in the night" only if we trust god.

Stress, tensions, work pressure ,traffic jams, lack of security etc are a part of our daily existence. But God is capable of transforming our sufferings and "mourning into gladness"(jeremiah31:13).Habakkuk3:17-18 says: "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my saviour." We ought to be able to replicate the same sentiment, ie. rejoice and praise god even when things are not fine with us.