“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” (Psalm 100:1-2)
I last visited Bev the day before she died, and on that Sunday, at Thornton Manor, the noise from a handful of spirited great-grandsons truly was joyful: Giggles and wiggles filling Bev’s room, even at times spilling out into the hallways, and “Papa” Jones was charged with corralling the boyish enthusiasm that surely yearned to be loosed somewhere outdoors on a sunny summer afternoon.
To his creative credit, Papa Jones at one point steered his grandsons to a card table standing in a corner of the Thorton Manor dining room. Upon its vinyl surface lay the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and Papa and company wasted no time in knitting together the fragments of its first corner. I don’t know if they finished the puzzle: Youthful focus is fleeting – particularly when energy is high, and Bev’s earthly time at Thornton Manor was then being measured in hours.
So, no, I don’t expect that Papa’s crew had sufficient time to put all the puzzle pieces in place. But I expect someone else did. Or will! And thus we face the melancholy reality of our days: Sometimes the seeds we sow are not always ours for the harvest. Yet we nonetheless join all the earth in making a joyful noise to the Lord, worshiping him with gladness, coming into his presence with singing – even though an important and beloved piece of life’s earthly puzzle has gone missing, no thanks to death.
“Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Psalm 100:3-5)
Such heavenly love endures across generations, because God’s love endures within you and me. Bev fed and watered the seeds of love that she planted within so many of you. So make some joyful noise! Let love endure! Find joy in the beauty of everyday life! Like Bev, feed the kids, experience God in the pots and pans – even the dirty ones that need soaking and scouring! Let no flower ever die; always hit the dancefloor when Mollie B plays a polka.
Make some joyful noise! Let love endure! Get down on the living-room floor with the Ron-Dogs – as Bev did – when the littles are farming with their toy tractors. So also, even before they earn their school permits, give ’em a head start on their driver’s education with a spin or two around the block. Their parents don’t necessarily need to know.
Make some joyful noise! Let love endure! Follow Bev’s lead in living out your faith in both word and deed! Let her legacy of joyful noise and loving care fill in the missing pieces of the days that lie ahead. Such grace is now ours for careful discovery and loving placement in the complicated puzzle of sadness, grief, and loss.
“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come into his presence with singing. … Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. … For his steadfast love endures forever.”
On that Sunday of my last visit with Bev, I shared with her the words of another psalm – one that surely ought to inspire the joyful noise of singing and embodied praise. Listen for words of life, words of hope, in Psalm 139 –
O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in the pit, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them – they are more than the sand; I come to the end, and I am still with you.
Make a joyful noise, my friends! For in all the transition times of earthly life, God remains close, forever abiding – behind, before, and beside. So forever and always worship the Lord with gladness, and come into his presence with loud singing, with spirited dancing, in celebration of passionate love that endures forever, on earth as it is in heaven.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during the funeral for Beverly Johnson on Monday, July 7, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA.