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For many generations in England, it was the custom that when a person in the village died the church bell would be rung. These were not just a single bell at these churches, they often had a combination of bells and a team of ringers who took pride in their work. And they had peals for different occasions: for every church season that came along, for the movable feasts of the church, and for when someone died. It was from this custom that John Donne wrote a well-known meditation:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne – Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I came to understand this in a way I had never really understood it before.



Author

Ronald L. Dart

Ronald L. Dart (1934–2016) — People around the world have come to appreciate his easy style, non-combative approach to explaining the Bible, and the personal, almost one-on-one method of explaining what’s going on in the world in the light of the Bible. After retiring from teaching and church administration in 1995 he started Christian Educational Ministries and the Born to Win radio program.

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Image Credits: Robin Lucas