The Composer Who Saw Heaven Open

In the late summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel locked himself in his London apartment on Brook Street and barely ate for twenty-four days. Friends who checked on him found the German-born composer weeping over sheets of manuscript paper, scribbling notes at a furious pace. When he finished the "Hallelujah" chorus, Handel reportedly told his servant, "I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself."

Something had broken through. The music that poured from those three weeks became Messiah, a work that has moved millions across nearly three centuries. But here is the detail that matters most: Handel did not stay in that room. He came back down. He revised the score, gathered musicians, and conducted the premiere in Dublin the following April. The glory he glimpsed did not paralyze him — it propelled him.

Peter wanted to build shelters on that mountain and stay forever in the blinding radiance of Christ's transfigured glory. Most of us would have done the same. But the voice of the Almighty thundered through the cloud with a command: "Listen to Him." And Jesus led them back down to the valley, where a desperate father waited with a suffering child.

Mountaintop revelations are not destinations. They are fuel for the road ahead. The glory Peter, James, and John witnessed that day was meant to sustain their faith through the cross that was coming — and carry them into the world that needed what they had seen.