Handel's Triumph from the Deathbed

In the spring of 1737, George Frideric Handel suffered a devastating stroke that paralyzed his right side. Doctors in London declared his career finished. The greatest composer in England, they said, would never play or write again. Death and defeat seemed to hover over everything he had built.

Yet Handel recovered — stubbornly, remarkably — and returned to his work. But his greatest triumph was still twenty years away. In 1759, Handel attended the final performance of his Messiah at Covent Garden, now elderly and completely blind. When the chorus reached the passage drawn from this very scripture — "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" — the audience rose to its feet. Handel, who could no longer see the performers or the crowd, wept openly.

Eight days later, Handel died. But here is what strikes the heart: he had chosen those words from 1 Corinthians 15 not as a theory about some distant hope, but as a shout of personal defiance. He had stared down paralysis, blindness, financial ruin, and public ridicule. And his final artistic statement was a declaration that death does not win.

Paul's words are not gentle comfort for the faint of heart. They are a battle cry. Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ — a victory that transforms even our final breath into an opening note of eternity.