"The Song is Ended, But the Melody Lingers On"

A few years ago, when I was going through some boxes of memorabilia, sorting and tossing out the unimportant papers, I found a handwritten paper that had been in my husband's things. I recently ran across it again and I really like the thoughts that are there and would like to share them here. These words commemorate the life of a relative of my husband, and a long time church member, Sunday School teacher and one of the church organists. It seems it was read at one of the ladies meetings at church. After the introduction part of the message is the following. I don't know who to credit writing this, and think that many thoughts come from another writing but that is just a guess. (parenthesis are mine)

" Her life is comparable to a song that was sung. 'The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.' (In Job 38:7 God asks Job, "Where were you) when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

Since "the morning stars sang together" at the creation, the lives of all people can well be described as music. For music is the one art that can express the ever changing moods and events in men's lives.

In it we find love, hate, peace, war, joy, sorrow, harmony or discord understandably portrayed. In music, there are many changes of tempo and expression: slow, fast, loud, soft, soothing or exciting, and there are rests also. As Ruskin says, "There is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it."

In our whole life melody the music is broken off here and there by rests, and we foolishly think we have come to the end of time.

God sends a time of forced leisure - sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden pause in the choral hymn of our lives, and we lament that some voices must be silent and a part missing in the music which ever goes up to the ear of the Creator.

How does the musician read the rests? See him beat time with an unvarying count and catch up the next note true and steady, as if no breaking place had come in between.

Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the time and not be dismayed at the rests. They are not to be slurred over, nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the key note.

If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With our eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear.

The life melody of J. . . . . N. . . . .  was interspersed with many rests until, on April 24, 19 . .  at the age of 92 years, the last, sweet note of the melody faded into silence and God wrote the final rest."