The Composer London Had Written Off

In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. The composer who had once dazzled the courts of Europe now faced crushing debt in London. Three of his operas had flopped in succession. A stroke had paralyzed his right arm. Creditors circled. One newspaper mocked him as a spent force, a relic of a bygone musical era. At fifty-six, the builders of London's cultural establishment had discarded him like a cracked stone.

Then a libretto arrived from Charles Jennens — scripture passages stitched together, tracing the story of the Messiah from prophecy to resurrection. Something ignited in Handel. For twenty-four days he barely ate or slept, scrawling notes in his cramped Brook Street apartment. His servant reportedly found him weeping over the manuscript, the ink still wet on the Hallelujah Chorus. "I did think I did see all Heaven before me," Handel later said, "and the great God Himself."

When Messiah premiered in Dublin in April 1742, the audience rose to their feet — and the world has never sat back down. The man London dismissed became the voice through which millions would sing their praise to the Almighty.

The psalmist knew this pattern long before Handel lived it: "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." When God lifts what the world has cast aside, the only fitting response is the one Handel himself composed — unending thanks to the One whose steadfast love endures forever.