The Bells of Paris

On August 25, 1944, after four years of Nazi occupation, the first French tanks rolled into central Paris. For a breathless moment, the city held still. Then Emmanuel — the great thirteen-ton bell of Notre-Dame — began to ring. Within minutes, every church bell in Paris joined the chorus. Sacré-Coeur on the hill of Montmartre. Saint-Sulpice on the Left Bank. Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Eustache, the Madeleine. Hundreds of bells, silenced for years under German order, suddenly pealing together across the rooftops.

Parisians poured into the streets weeping. Strangers embraced. Old women who had shuttered their windows for four years threw them open. The sound carried over the Seine, through narrow alleys, into cellars where families had hidden. No one needed to explain what the bells meant. Liberation had come.

This is what Isaiah saw in the spirit — watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem lifting their voices together, singing in unison because the Lord had come to comfort His people. "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who say to Zion, 'Your God reigns!'" The prophet heard those bells centuries before they rang — the glorious sound of captivity ending and the Almighty returning to redeem what was lost. Every soul that carries that gospel today is a bell tower, ringing out the same ancient, uncontainable news: salvation has arrived.