To Be Heard by a Million

 I have this romantic notion about bells. For some reason, hearing city bells ringing across landscapes from tall towers just makes my heart sing. I especially love the bells here for a few reasons.

1. I always think of that Coldplay song “I hear Jerusalem bells a-ringing…” and how cool it is that I actually do.

2. It makes me think of the ancient times here in the city and all the bells that must have played through these streets during significant moments in history.

3. It’s a nice break from the prayer call that happens five times every day (which, by the way, I can hear as I’m writing this).

Here at the Jerusalem Center, we are so privileged to have a huge, beautiful organ. The Jerusalem branch president who lives here plays it, and he plays it very well. Each Sunday (not the Sabbath, remember?) he is invited by the YMCA to play the bells in their huge bell tower that stands several stories high and looks out over the entire city of Jerusalem.

Each Sunday at 11:15, he invites the students to join him in the bell tower and watch him play.  When I heard this, I was thrilled. We took the tiny elevator up, and as we got out we saw him sitting at what looked like a piano on steroids. Instead of keys, it has big levers that you push with your fists. I was mesmerized by the sound.

We went up one floor to watch the bells ring and the sound in the tower was deafening. We could see the entire city from all sides of the tower, and I knew that the song was reaching all the houses and buildings in sight.

When I came back down to where he was playing, I was surprised to see a student sitting at the bells, playing a hymn from the Mormon hymn book. He played beautifully and when he finished, the branch president asked if anyone else would like to try. A few other students did, so he had them practice once on the small bell set, and then they could move to the real ones.

I decided this was an opportunity I could not pass up. I opened the hymn book to the shortest, easiest one I could find, which just so happened to be “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”

I stumbled through it on the small set. It felt strange playing with my fists instead of fingers, and the overall feel of the instrument was foreign. After I finished playing on the small set, I was so nervous that I almost didn’t even try on the real set. Thanks to peer pressure, I gave in and plopped the hymn book on the bell set. My heart was beating out my chest as I sat down, but after playing the first note, I was hooked.

I wasn’t just hearing Jerusalem bells a-ringing, but I was ringing them. I was playing the bells of Jerusalem. There are few moments in my life that I consider magical, but I think this one truly was. On the second verse of my little hymn, the branch president joined me in playing the harmony and the music came alive.

To me, those bells really were my praise to God, from whom all blessings flow. That day, over a million people heard my song from a million different backgrounds and a million different lives under a god who loves them all.

When the clock struck noon, we lined up at the bells, and each student took a turn hitting the key until we reached 12, striking our spot in history.