I wonder how many Christian ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’ have been written since the days of Adam. A million? More? And will we get to sing them all in heaven, or hear them presented by choirs in the language of the people who wrote them? Maybe not all the songs will make it, as implied in that second last chapter of the Book: ‘The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it’. That rule might reduce the number by half (!); yet that still leaves a lot of church hymnary.

And that’s not even counting the songs written by angels. No doubt those songs will be each worth singing, yet I imagine they emphasize a different thing about God, namely his glory, rather than his grace; for they know grace only by observation, not by redemptive experience. (Like songs written about a husband by a loving wife, versus songs written about a father by an adoptive child.)

But surely there will be some that will be sung by angels and humans, both; and won’t those anthems lift off the roof of heaven! Yet there is a better thought, and penned by that champion of the Faith, Jonathan Edwards, who dreamed that each Christian would be as a musical note in heaven: “Every soul there, is as a note in some concert of delightful music, that sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together blend in the most rapturous strains in praising God and the Lamb forever.”