From Broken Hands to the Hallelujah Chorus

In 1737, George Frideric Handel suffered a stroke that left his right arm paralyzed. Doctors said he would never play again. The composer who had once filled London's concert halls was broke, depressed, and forgotten. His career, by every measure, was finished.

Then something remarkable happened. Handel slowly recovered the use of his hand — his doctors called it a miracle. But the deeper transformation was still coming. In the summer of 1741, a librettist named Charles Jennens sent Handel a scripture-based text. Handel locked himself in his London home and began to compose. For twenty-four days he worked feverishly, barely eating or sleeping. What emerged was Messiah — including the thundering "Hallelujah Chorus" that has moved audiences to their feet for nearly three centuries.

When his servant brought him food during those weeks, he reportedly found Handel weeping over the score. "I did think I did see all Heaven before me," Handel said, "and the great God Himself."

The man the world had written off became the vessel for one of the most transcendent pieces of music ever composed. Not despite his brokenness, but through it.

The Almighty works the same way in our lives. He doesn't wait for us to have it all together. He meets us in our paralysis, our failure, our lowest chapter — and writes something through us that we never could have composed on our own.