church bells

Last night at small group, I read this story from our friends who lived in Scotland for a number of years: 

Upon moving to Methlick (a small town in Scotland), one thing we had to accustom ourselves to was the church bell keeping the hours through the day and night. It took weeks to achieve unbroken sleep, as our ‘manse’ was nearly across from the church.

Slowly though, we began to see these bells not as intrusions into our life and sleep, but as ways of staying awake. As a church, we began to grasp that the hardest spiritual thing is to be present – present to where we are and who we are with. We could live sacrificially, we could read our Bibles, we could hold village fairs to raise money for lands far away. But the hardest thing of all was being present to God, others, and the holy ground beneath our feet.

We wanted to be more present to the miracle of everyday and everyone. We tried to remember God. We wanted to be attentive and prayerful. And we continually failed. Then someone had the idea to use the bell. Whenever the bell tolled, we would stop whatever we were doing – peeling potatoes, hanging the washing, ploughing the fields, walking to school – and shout, whisper or groan, “here I am!”

Fast forward to Wenatchee, our small American town, where there are no such bells. But we discovered one thing that we did have: cell phones! One Lent, our church set our phone alarms to various times throughout the day so we could pause and say, “here I am.” Mothers set their phone alarms and when the alarm sounded, their children would shout, “it’s time to say ‘here I am’!” and would rush about to grab a candle – helping to hallow the moment. Best of all was noon, when the whole church stopped wherever we were, to say, “here we are.”

This week, some of us in small group have set an alarm as a reminder of this and as an effort to be "more present to God, others and the holy ground beneath our feet" as my friend stated above. 

Last night, when the alarm went off, I was downstairs fixing dinner and my phone was upstairs so I missed it. My alarm is supposed to go off again tonight. Who knows if I will even know where the phone is. :)  Oh well- here I am! 

May this email be a simple reminder to you to stop what you are doing and be present to the moment right before you giving thanks to God for the gifts you can see right here and now.