From Ruins to Hallelujah

In 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. The composer who had once dazzled the courts of Europe now faced crushing debt, failing health, and audiences that had turned their backs on his work. A stroke four years earlier had paralyzed his right arm and left him struggling to play. Critics wrote his obituaries while he still breathed. At fifty-six, his career seemed irretrievably over.

Then a librettist named Charles Jennens handed him a collection of scripture passages woven together to tell the story of the Messiah. Something stirred in Handel. He began composing with a ferocity that startled even his servants. For roughly twenty-four days, he barely ate or slept. When he finished the "Hallelujah Chorus," he reportedly said through tears, "I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God Himself."

Messiah premiered in Dublin the following spring to thunderous acclaim. The man the world had discarded gave the world its most beloved sacred composition.

This is the pattern of the God we serve. El Shaddai, the Almighty, does not look at our ruined seasons and see endings. He sees raw material. The prophet Joel promised that God would "restore the years that the locusts have eaten." He takes what is broken, depleted, and written off, and from it composes something the world cannot ignore.

Whatever feels finished in your life today, it is not beyond the reach of the One who turns ruins into hallelujahs.