This song! I just discovered it, so blessedly, a few weeks ago.  It stirs up all sorts of joys in me. It sounds like Christmas, tastes like chocolate, and feels like I’m rolling around in a million dollars!  It just sounds so luxuriously rich! It makes me want to join an orchestra just so I can be part of a great swell playing it. I do plan on joining an orchestra again someday and I will request we perform this song.

Here it is in PDF. I love playing it on the piano!

I discovered a scripture recently that relates to this song. In my recent reading of the Bible for Come, Follow Me, I studied the verse about becoming new in Christ, from Colossians 3:9-10:

9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds;

10 And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

I studied the word “new” in Hebrew. I was delighted to see that in Hebrew it is “chadesh,” which is one letter different from the Hebrew word for holy “qodesh.” I don’t think that is a coincidence. Being new and being holy are similar concepts. To be truly holy, we must be new in Christ. They both involve Hebrew letters which are symbolized by a doorway, to mean “humilty,” and teeth, to symbolize “digestion/internalization.”

The song, “Ring the Bells of Heaven,” is about a wild son returning to his father, the Prodigal Son, I presume. I used to think that that story was far removed from me. Now I realize that it applies to me in every moment. Every moment gives me the opportunity to be a Prodigal Son, that is, to be worldly-focused. Every moment also gives me the opportunity to be focused on God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Jim Cox calls this “becoming spiritually centered.” When I feel the pull to be frustrated, to give up hope, to be angry and unforgiving, that is the pull of the wiley and wild Enemy. Those are old habits I have been used to returning to. Christ invites me to a new way. This new way appears in every moment as well.  I can resist old habits and choose the new, and return “from the wild,” to the Father. I was taught by Jim Cox that I can do this by silently affirming the truth. in the form of a prayer, that I am His daughter, and He loves me with infinite perfect love. When I see other people as children of God as well, and affirm that truth in my mind as well, in silent prayer, especially if I’m being treated poorly, I can choose the “new wo(man)” and return from the wild to the Father.

Truly the bells are ringing for us when we turn to God in any and each moment.