In C.S. Lewis’s afterlife fantasy The Great Divorce, he comes across people in heaven singing and describes them this way:
If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old.
What music could be so powerful that only looking at the score, not even hearing it played, could alone reverse the decaying effects of the fall of Adam? Beethoven’s 9th? Lightyears away, but nonetheless hinting at it I believe. I have heard Christians speak this way of the scriptures – of the power of the physical written scripture on the page, of hugging their bibles close, of the joy felt by a prisoner who discovers a single page of the “The Gospel According to St. John.”
The law that Moses bought down from Mount Sinai was etched in stone by God himself. What fear and trembling must the sight of those tablets stirred in the people of Israel? Behold the law, announcing our certain death. Many years later, the gospel completes the law and announces our redeemer. Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Christ. He is the one the angels sing of. We join them now, and even more so in the endless days to come!