You are familiar, no doubt, with a famous painting called "The Angelus." It is by the French artist Jean Francois Millet. It portrays a peasant couple in rustic garb, tools at hand, heads bowed in prayer, standing amid the clods and stones of a broken field. In the distance, not always observed by every viewer, can be seen the bell-tower of a church. Thinking of that distant spire, Millet expressed the hope that all who viewed the picture would also hear the bells. This was important to him.

And it should be important to us. Most of us know about the toil, and the trouble, and the weariness which comes at the end of a long, hard day. But some, perhaps, have never seen the spire in the distance nor heard the music that comes from afar. Some see only what is in the foreground, what is immediate, at hand. By this they live, or try to.

What we do in worship, dear friends, is to look beyond all foreground scenes, searching for spires, listening for bells. Let us pray that here today you and I may see beyond the clods of our broken fields, that here in worship now we may hear the clear-toned calling of bells that peal from afar.