Sinfonia Sirenum

        Since we are in the Passover/Easter season, we sung the song, "The Strife is Over",  in our church on Sunday and it gave me a moment or two of  "pause".  Hearing this old song brought back a memory of another Sunday from my youth. I was sitting in the den of my family's country home with my dad who was finally letting down after a morning and a half of preaching and ministering. We had just finished a large Sunday dinner (outside the South this would be called lunch) and it was taking its toll on dad.  I had been talking with him about his war years and he was reminiscing about General George Patton's funeral. He was falling asleep on the couch in the warm sunlight of that sleepy summer afternoon as he told me this story.

Wife, Beatrice Patton
(my father pictured immediately
over Beatrice's left shoulder)

         Dad was a Chaplain during WWII. He got several field promotions and by the end of the war became the head chaplain in the European Theater. He had formed a choral group that traveled throughout Europe singing for the soldiers. At the end of the War General Patton died in Germany. Mrs. Beatrice Patton called my dad and asked him if his "chapeleers" would sing at her husband's funeral in Heidelberg. The only song that 'Old Blood and Guts' requested was  "The Strive Is Over... the battle done". Dad, like most of the people in our church last Sunday, did not know the song. He and his choir learned it in the back of a troop carrier as they drove the autobahn to the funeral. He said that his group sang great and the funeral was amazing, brass was everywhere. Heidelberg's Christ Church had a huge pipe organ and the song "The Strife is Over" was made for it. Dad said it was majestic.
      Good story, huh, but I wonder about that song. To this day it bothers me. How much of the battle is really over, even when you die?  May be it's the battle that is over but not the war. My Bible tells me there is still spiritual warfare going on. It took an archangel 21 days to break through to Daniel fasting and praying in Babylon. Sounds like tough resistance to me. Patton had to battle nearly as long to break through to liberate Bastogne (he may have been a god but he was no Archangel). And the war was not over when he arrived at the gates of the city,  at head of the 4th Armored. Neither was it over when he arrived at door of heaven, probably to his delight, he was a warrior.

"Hang In Tough, Bastogne 1944"
by John Shaw 

       We are warriors as Christians. We win our battles. And we want to go to heaven and rest but a restful heaven seems odd to me at times. Is Christ resting in heaven? Are the saints resting with Him? Christ ever lives (and never sleeps) to make intercession for the saints. If He is doing that and some saints under the altar are crying out , "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and avenge (from dike - to return harm for harm) our blood on them that dwell on the earth (Rev. 6:10)?" Avenge? That sounds like a war cry to me.  If all that is happening then what the hell are people doing taking R and R by the pearlie gates?  Granted the battle is suppose to be over for us who pass to the other side, but the war still rages and creation is waiting for the manifestations of the sons of God. Hurrah! (that's suppose to be the sound the Marines make?). John Stevens put it this way in his sermon "Earnest Expectation":


"God’s people are in an end-time spiritual battle against the satanic spirits that are warring to prevent the revealing of the sons of God. The very first breakthrough into the revealing of the sons of God will be like pushing over the first domino. After that a whole string of events and breakthroughs will start happening. The whole Kingdom will come forth. We do not realize the importance of the focus that the Lord wants us to have in spiritual warfare. As we aim at a target, focusing on it, the Lord will bless us.... Once the Lord truly reveals this to us, we will never stop interceding and pressing the battle because we will see what we are in", p.113. 

Josiah and the Passover Reading

      So I guess Passover/Easter is awesome with the Victory over death but the enforcement of it is left to the sons, and that is still in play. The sons must be obedient to what the Lord asks, just as Christ was during His great Passover experience. This could be like the Passover of Josiah in Kings (2Kings 23:23-24) where he battles against the evil forces of his day and the people pledged themselves to the covenant of the Lord.  Deliverance even for Israel from Egypt on that first Passover was not without much battle. In battle you always assign someone to pick up the Flag if the carrier is shot. So it is for the sons to raise the standard (mental flash to Iwo Jima), because there is definitely no "Peace in the Valley".  I feel more like one of those grunts freezing in Bastogne waiting for deliverance. They call my Dad's generation the "greatest" generation and it was awesome. But I think the Greatest Generation is going to be the generation that shows up as the "Sons of God" and liberates this tired old earth, then I"ll  "live and sing to thee" with faith "The Strife Is Over".