The Bells That Rang Again Over Paris

On April 15, 2019, the world watched Notre-Dame Cathedral burn. The spire collapsed into flame. The great rose windows cracked. And then, for five long years, silence settled where bells had rung over Paris for eight centuries.

Then on December 7, 2024, the Emmanuel bell — all thirteen tons of her — rang out over the city once more. Thousands gathered along the Seine, some weeping openly, some pressing hands to their chests as if the sound had reached something deep inside them. The resonance carried across bridges and through narrow streets, over café tables and into apartment windows thrown open to hear it. People who hadn't set foot in a church in decades stopped on the sidewalk and looked up.

That is the sound Psalm 98 is reaching for. "Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things." The psalmist describes a joy so overwhelming it cannot stay inside the human heart — it spills into rivers that clap their hands and mountains that sing together. It is the kind of praise that erupts when something you believed was lost comes back to life.

The Almighty takes what fire has consumed, what years have silenced, and He restores it — not merely to what it was, but to something that rings with deeper meaning. The bells of Notre-Dame did not simply resume their old song. They sang a new one, shaped by loss, patience, and resurrection.

That is always how God works His marvelous things.