Handel's Hallelujah from the Ashes

By 1741, George Frideric Handel was a broken man. Four years earlier, a stroke had paralyzed his right arm — doctors declared he would never play again. Though he recovered against all odds, his operas continued to fail. Creditors circled. London audiences abandoned him. At fifty-six, the once-celebrated composer sat alone in his Brook Street flat, drowning in debt and despair, convinced his life's work had come to nothing.

Then a libretto arrived from Charles Jennens — a collection of scripture passages telling the story of the Messiah. Something stirred in Handel. He began to compose. For twenty-four days he barely ate or slept, filling page after page with music that seemed to pour through him rather than from him. When his servant brought meals, he often found them untouched and Handel weeping over the manuscript. Upon completing the "Hallelujah Chorus," Handel reportedly said, "I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself."

The man the world had written off produced what many consider the greatest piece of sacred music ever composed.

This is the arc of Psalm 30. David writes, "You brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit." The Almighty does not waste our seasons of weeping. He transforms them. He takes the paralyzed hand and makes it write hallelujahs. He turns our mourning into dancing — not by erasing the sorrow, but by redeeming it into something that echoes through the centuries.