Release Date: November 26th, 2025Listen to the Bells
- by Glyn Jones
Note - It would help to begin if you were at a place where you could listen to two YouTube clips - links below - and to best hear them, you should have the volume reasonably high.
Sometimes we get caught up in a personalized, pious faith that tends not to see beyond our lives and our needs. The liturgical calendar can help us see beyond that. This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and for a moment at least, let us step back from the stuff that fills our lives, the stuff we see whenever we enter a store, even the stuff that drives our week as we plan for this time. Let us take a big step back and look at the big picture.
Advent invites us to do that. Stop what we are doing in the everyday hustle and reflect on the big picture - of God and God at work in the world and the movement from creation to sin to Jesus to the Church and to us. To look at the big picture that is really so big it is incomprehensible. Maybe it is so big that it is beyond raising questions and just leaves us in silence.
But first, before there is too much silence. I have often thought that Advent should start with this song - or at least the first 39 seconds of the song. Listen to those 39 seconds. As those bells ring, I feel a tightening inside - a feeling that I need to jump out of bed and get going - and maybe that is about life too - get up - get going - be prepared - for the day - for the year - for life.
A few years ago, I spent some time in a monastery. They had different bells. Listen to these bells. These call us to worship. They have rung out for millennium. In that location for almost 800 years. But while that seems like a long time, it is only a short part of the time that God has invited people to follow. People have rung bells, or blown horns, or in other ways invited the followers of God to gather together to worship God since, well, the creation of the earth. We are part of something that is big - really big - bigger than we can comprehend!
For me, this is one of the gifts of the liturgical calendar, particularly the seasons leading up to Christmas and Easter. They remind us that this thing we are part of is big, bigger than we can imagine. That we are called to wake up, to get ready, to prepare ourselves. We are followers of God, and that means something!
Texts from Isaiah have often been used in this season to help us see the bigger picture, and to reflect on God’s actions in the world around us. They are also words that invite us to wake up! - be alert! - prepare ourselves. Not to wait on a couch, but to walk out into God’s world to live as followers of God together with other followers of God.
Read Isaiah 52:1a, 2, or perhaps Matthew 24-25
-Glyn Jones is a retired MCEC pastor