The Composer Who Was Rewritten

In the summer of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a ruined man. His operas had fallen out of fashion in London. Creditors circled. A stroke four years earlier had partially paralyzed his right hand. At fifty-six, the composer who had once dazzled kings sat alone in his rented rooms on Brook Street, staring at a stack of scripture texts sent by his friend Charles Jennens.

He picked up his pen.

Over the next twenty-four days, Handel composed the entirety of Messiah — all three parts, from the prophecy of a coming Savior to the triumphant Hallelujah Chorus. When he finished, a servant reportedly found him with tears streaming down his face. "I did think I did see all Heaven before me," Handel said, "and the great God Himself."

Something happened in that room beyond the writing of notes on a page. A broken man encountered the living Word of God, and neither he nor the music that poured from him could remain the same.

This is what the Almighty does. He does not wait for us to be whole before He uses us. He meets us in our Brook Street rooms — bankrupt, broken, half-paralyzed by life — and He writes something through us that we could never compose alone. As Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). God does not renovate. He transforms. And sometimes His greatest masterpiece begins with a man who has nothing left but an empty page and a willingness to begin.