When the Song is Finished

“I will enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” (Psalm 100:4)

There is a danger in over eulogizing our loved ones. Connor would sometimes mention it. Grief tempts us to hagiography. A fancy way of saying we paint the edges of our loved-ones lives with more gold than truth allows. So let us speak plainly, today, shall we? As things were and are, not as we wish them to be.

Every child of God carries a song in their heart—a melody born of grace. It’s penned by the Spirit, to the tune “The Most High God.”

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise” is just such a song.

Here on earth, the child of God sings haltingly. Beneath the veil of this frail flesh, our voice trembles with weakness; our thanksgiving flickers like a match in the wind. The remains of sin clings too close, casting its shadow across every note. We do not, we cannot, lift our praise with the fullness we long for. We’re still tethered to the body of this death (Romans 7:24). That means every note of song must pass through the groaning lips of corruption.

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So, I think of our Connor. My dear friend in Christ for 20 years, my elder brother in faith, a father in Israel. He was like Faithful in Pilgrim’s Progress, walking alongside many of us on our mutual road to the celestial city. Actions of friendship and hospitality. Words of instruction. Words of truth. Sometimes direct words. But always, I felt, words of love.

His steps were marked (By what? Imperfection and grace.) But his life, from my vantage point, was an exemplar of godliness to follow.

Here on earth, his heart knew the wrestlings of faith. His voice didn’t always rise so swiftly, sometimes. Not from shadowed guilt, necessarily, but from a soul that knew the heart all too well (Jeremiah 17:9). Too well to presume upon grace, too informed to over-claim what faith might not fully grasp.

Self-suspicion dogged him sometimes, as it does many of God’s own in the storm (Psalm 42:5). Yet he also bore, often even in the very same breath, a great expectation…a hope fixed. Not on his feelings, but on the Savior he confessed (Hebrews 10:23).

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When I heard of his passing, I wept. You did too. But my grief turned to his joy.

I thought of that moment when the child of God arrives. When the mist of this vale splits, when all pain and sin and questions dissolve forever in the face of that blessed Savior (1 John 3:2).

What must it have been like to sing this Psalm in full experience?

“O enter then His gates with joy, within His courts His praise proclaim; let thankful songs your tongues employ, O bless and magnify His Name.”

Like us all, Connor sang Old One-hundredth with a trembling lip…thanksgiving mingled with tears, praise tempered by feet of clay (Ecclesiastes 5:2).

But in that moment, when “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8), when the evidence of things hoped for became substance (something that we do not yet know), what must that have been? What is it, when the child of God, for the very first time, enters the actual gates, the final courts of heaven?

And to arrive as a long-traveled son come home. More known and more loved there, than known and missed here. Redeemed by Christ’s blood (Revelation 5:9), robed in the righteousness of the Lamb (Isaiah 61:10), Connor sings today.

“Let thankful songs your tongues employ, O bless and magnify His Name.”

No faltering now, dear family and friends. No stammering tongue of doubt, no warbling voice for sin. Only fullness of joy in the presence of his Savior.

What joy. What bliss!

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Many times, Connor would underscore that the redeemed are justified by faith, not feelings (Romans 5:1).

“But feelings are good too,” he would say with a smile.

And how could there not be feelings? When a sound, Spirit given faith finally looks, for the first and last time, upon First and the Last, upon the Surety who bore his curse, how could there not be overwhelming praise? Connor knew this truth, spoke of it, and clung to it when his heart sometimes lagged behind his own confession (Mark 9:24).

Even as he approached death, he did not wrestle. He waited (Isaiah 40:31). He did not boast; he trusted (Psalm 13:5). And in that final breath, as his soul slipped its last tether, the waiting finally ended. The gates of Old One-hundredth stood real before him, and he entered them as he hoped—singing.

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Perhaps the song of the redeemed is not a single song. Perhaps it’s this final one:

“Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Revelation 7:10).

This much we can say:

Each redeemed knows that it’s not by might (Zechariah 4:6), but by mercy (Titus 3:5); not by strength, but by grace, not with boasting, but with thanksgiving (Colossians 2:7) that, for the first time, we sing unencumbered.

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What a moment. To open our eyes in eternity. Where faith for the first time becomes sight, dear believer! Where redeemed hearts are departing this vale of tears, and arrive among the ever growing congregation of the faithful. A sea so vast, so endless, that no man can find its edges. Gathering in from every age, region, color, and tongue (Revelation 7:9). Welcoming one another like an old lost friend. Adding one more plate to the endless table, and one more voice to the growing choir.

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Here below, we know in part, we prophesy in part, we sing in part (1 Corinthians 13:9). And our harmonies crack, by the discord of our fallenness. Redeemed? Yes—yet desperately incomplete.

But, oh—there, in glory, to be completed in Him (Philippians 1:6).

We who remain still wrestle with the mortifying effects of a won battle (Romans 8:13). Still putting the nasty vestiges of the enemy to death in self. Still warring within our members (James 4:1).

But now, Connor sings in whole, his praise perfected among saints and angels (Hebrews 12:22–23). To Whom is he singing? “O bless and magnify His Name.” The Savior’s face. How lovely a face it must be! Once seen through a glass darkly (1 Corinthians 13:12), now shines unveiled, eye to eye. Where every question that once clouded, guilt that once cluttered, pain that once stymied, dissolve in Him.

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Let us rightly, then, read the testimony of one who has gone before us.

Make no mistake. A father in Israel has gone home. Who will be raised up in his place? The gates of Old 100th have closed behind Connor now. Those blessed bustling courts have received him with a ‘hail,’ and a son’s welcome. He is there, fellowshipping, worshiping his Savior, resting in Him. His joy now knows no end (Psalm 16:11).

So we—dear Susan, children, family, friends—mourn not as those without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13), but lift our eyes unto the same Savior (Hebrews 12:2).

One day, may our imperfect strains, too, join his now perfect anthem, and bless the Lamb that was slain forever and ever (Revelation 5:13).