{"id":15955,"date":"2026-03-10T12:27:52","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T12:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/silas-a-miraculous-connection-from-a-biblical-namesake\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:00:35","slug":"silas-a-miraculous-connection-from-a-biblical-namesake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/angels-and-miracles\/silas-a-miraculous-connection-from-a-biblical-namesake\/","title":{"rendered":"Silas: A Miraculous Connection from A Biblical Namesake"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When my son and his wife named <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/family\/grandchildren\/5-positive-character-traits-to-instill-in-your-grandchildren\/\">our first grandson<\/a> Silas, after the biblical character, I went back to the text with renewed interest. There it was, in the book of Acts, chapter 16. Silas and the apostle Paul were in prison. There was no possibility of escape. They were in the innermost cell, their feet fastened into stocks.<\/p>\n<p>Sometime around midnight, Silas and Paul were <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/how-to-wash-your-hands-with-your-favorite-hymns\/\">singing hymns<\/a> and praying, the other prisoners curious as to how they could be praising God at a time like this. And what was the result? A powerful earthquake that rocked the earth and flung the prison doors wide open. The chains came loose.<\/p>\n<p>Singing\u2026an earthquake\u2026and <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/prayer\/persistent-prayer\/why-gods-answer-to-prayer-is-always-yes\/\">a miraculous answer to prayer<\/a>. Why did that bring back to memory something that had once happened to me?<\/p>\n<p>As a kid, I loved to sing. (Still do.) In sophomore year at my suburban California high school, I yearned to be in the spring musical. But not just as a member of the chorus, as I\u2019d done in my freshman year. I wanted to play one of the leads. To sing a solo. To have a starring role. The show selected was <em>Brigadoon<\/em>. We\u2019d do four performances in May, rehearsing for months.<\/p>\n<p>Auditions began in February. I knew the musical well, having grown up listening to the record over and over, learning all the songs. That was another impressive thing about being in the musical. The school recorded the whole thing on an LP. It would be like hearing myself on one of those original Broadway cast albums I treasured.<\/p>\n<p>I auditioned for the second male lead, Charlie Dalrymple. As the tenor, Charlie sang the upbeat \u201cI\u2019ll Go Home with Bonnie Jean\u201d and the lyrical \u201cCome to Me, Bend to Me.\u201d He even got to get married on stage. A dream role in my eyes.<\/p>\n<p><em>Brigadoon<\/em>, if you don\u2019t know it, has , a magical, mystical plot. An American tourist, Tommy, stumbles upon a Scottish town, the so-named Brigadoon. The town appears out of the Scottish mist once every 100 years\u2014and for only 24 hours\u2014because a towns person had prayed it would be hidden to keep it safe from evil. On that magical day of the town\u2019s appearance in the twentieth century, all of Brigadoon is <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/friends-and-family\/marriage\/how-to-celebrate-a-wedding-anniversary-while-social-distancing\/\">celebrating the wedding<\/a> of their own Charlie and Bonnie Jean. Meanwhile, the American Tommy falls madly in love with Fiona, one of the residents of Brigadoon. What will be the couple\u2019s fate when Brigadoon recedes, with Fiona, into the fog for another 100 years?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d done well enough in my audition to make it to the callbacks, but there my nerves got the best of me. My voice seemed to get lost in a fog of its own. The director, our drama of teacher, went into a snit fit, something he was famous for doing. He declared that the show couldn\u2019t go on. It was impossible under the circumstances. We didn\u2019t have the talent, he said. We had no male leads good enough to play the parts.<\/p>\n<p>I went to bed that night feeling utterly disheartened and said a few prayers of my own. I didn\u2019t have the problems of the imprisoned Silas, but this dejected high schooler saw no way out of his situation. All seemed hopeless. Would I ever get my big chance on stage? My surfer brother in the next bed wouldn\u2019t have understood, so I kept my disappointment between God and me.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly before dawn, <a href=\"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/angels-and-miracles\/miracles\/gods-grace\/an-earthquake-survivor-s-lessons-on-life-and-loss\/\">I woke to the earth\u2019s tremble<\/a>. My bed shook. I sat up and watched a tennis shoe bounce into the air. My brother sat up just as the other shoe took flight. \u201cCool!\u201d he shouted. \u201cAn earthquake!\u201d Which was as exciting to him as catching a monster wave.<\/p>\n<p>The tremor lasted about a minute, at which point my mom poked her head into our room. \u201cDid you feel the earthquake?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Mom, we did. As it turned out, we weren\u2019t far from the epicenter.<\/p>\n<p>School was canceled that day. Fortunately, there was no apparent damage in our town, but it was certainly a reminder of how fragile life could be. Some of my drama friends and I gathered at the coffee shop for lunch, all of us in dismay about the show. We wanted to do it.<\/p>\n<p>Back at school, the director surprised us. He was willing to give us another try. Maybe the earthquake had put things into perspective for him, softened him a bit. This time I sang my heart out, quelling my fears and giving the performance my all. In the end, I was cast as Charlie, a lead role in my sophomore year!<\/p>\n<p>In the play, Charlie and Bonnie Jean\u2019s isn\u2019t the only love story. Everything works out for Tommy and Fiona, his one true love of Brigadoon. The town schoolmaster gives the final message: \u201cWhen ye love someone deeply, anythin\u2019 is possible. Even miracles.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Someday I\u2019ll sit and watch <em>Brigadoon<\/em> with Silas, and maybe he\u2019ll even sing along. Silas was quiet during the hymn singing when we took him to church on his first birthday. He was mesmerized by the stained-glass windows, staring at the worshippers who were enchanted by him. But soon he\u2019ll be ready to talk about miracles, like the big earthquake that freed his biblical namesake and the little earthquake that led me to my breakout role on the high school stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When my son and his wife named our first grandson Silas, after the biblical character, I went back to the text with renewed interest. There it was, in the book of Acts, chapter 16. Silas and the apostle Paul were in prison. There was no possibility of escape. They were in the innermost cell, their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":26672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138,150,149],"tags":[34,224,54,151],"ppma_author":[476],"class_list":["post-15955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angels-and-miracles","category-gods-grace","category-miracles","tag-child","tag-grandchildren","tag-miracles","tag-mysterious-ways"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Silas: A Miraculous Connection from A Biblical Namesake - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Silas: A Miraculous Connection from A Biblical Namesake\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When my son and his wife named our first grandson Silas, after the biblical character, I went back to the text with renewed interest. 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