This title has been on my mind. My mother or father would use the expression, "Hell's Bells!" when exasperated, or frustrated, or angry. I guess when you grow up around expressions, you don't really give them much thought.
I've known I would either write a book or blog about the problems I've encountered in churches...terrible that there have been enough bad experiences to write an entire book! One day I was sitting and thinking how I would order this book; would I include statistics that evidence the failure of churches as a whole, or simply write about my litnany of complaints...and how would one exactly market such a book? The title, I mused, would have to be catchy.
"Oh, hell's bells!" I muttered...then stopped.
I began to recall the chime of the bellfry at the Episcopalian church when I was a girl...as an acholyte, I rang that bell myself. It signified a call to people that church was about to start. The musical clang rang out through the town, calling people to hear the Word of the Lord. The bells were so appealing in their medelious chime....
Of course, most churches do not have the luxury of calling parishners inside the doors and given the politics, money changing, and faulty doctrines, it seems those lovely church bells are faulty; they too ofen misrepresent what one might find behind the doors of the mighty churches. Those bells found in the church bellfries too often are indeed the very bells of hell.
