Chapter 16 - Healing and Prison

The story of the slave girl who is healed in Acts 16 has layers of meaning. It calls us to an awareness of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. 
Paul and Silas are heading to a place to pray. On the way a slave girl, a person who has virtually no power in the culture, begins to follow them. The young woman had been used by her “owners” to earn them money by way of divination and fortune telling. Now she seeks some kind of freedom in following Paul and Silas and uses whatever little agency she has to cry out that Paul and Silas are servants of God proclaiming the way of salvation. This would seem to be a good thing, almost as if she is proclaiming the gospel herself. However, it is actually a kind of mindless praise of Paul and Silas themselves. Most of us have heard this kind of talk. It can come with people who feel relatively little power yet seek to call out in a way that their voice is heard. It is a kind of empty praise. Be careful of God talk. Empty God talk can come from places of lack of power, but it can also come from places of status quo security and it can be a distraction to the actual work and presence of the Holy Spirit. 
Paul and Silas certainly do not hear this talk as holy declaration. Paul is annoyed, but he also does see that the woman needs help. He heals her of the spirit that is causing this chaos. 
Soon after, this slave girl’s owners discover that the spirit that allowed her to be a fortune teller, the sprit that caused her pain, but gained them wealth, was gone, healed. Unlike Paul, they do not see the young woman as a person. They see her as a means to money. Then, as now, people do all kinds of terrible things simply to get more money. This woman had been kept down from her true humanity and identity by the culture, by the powers that be and by her “owners”. The owners complain to the authorities and Paul and Silas, who had freed this young woman from her turmoil and pain, are seized and beaten, arrested as agitators and thrown in prison. 
We ought to be agitators where money has come to have more value than people. 
We ought to be agitators where poor people are treated as expendable at best or used for gain of others at worst. 
Paul and Silas are pointing to a new reality, a world of the light of the Holy Spirit. 

Dear God; 
I have lived such a comfortable life. Grant that I could see the ways of the world that dehumanize so many people. I pray for the self-reflection to consider where my action or inaction has hurt others simply so that my way of life could be maintained. 
I pray also that I would have the discernment to see when words about you are true and powerful and when they are empty God-talk masking some grievance or pain or masking some commitment to a heartless way of things. 
Thank you for this day. 
In Jesus’ name; 
Amen