The Masterpiece Composed from the Ruins

In the autumn of 1741, George Frideric Handel was a broken man. The composer who had once dazzled the courts of Europe was now sixty-six, crippled by a stroke that had paralyzed his right hand, drowning in debt, and facing what looked like the final movement of a failed career. London had largely forgotten him.

Then a libretto arrived from Charles Jennens — nothing but scripture passages arranged to tell the story of Christ from prophecy to resurrection. Handel locked himself in his room on Brook Street and began to write. For roughly twenty-four days he barely ate, barely slept. His servant found meal trays untouched outside the door. 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."

The result was Messiah — arguably the most performed choral work in history, sung every year for nearly three centuries now.

Here is what faith does. It does not wait for perfect conditions. It picks up the pen with a hand that recently could not move. It listens for God's voice in a season when every circumstance screams that the story is over. Handel had every reason to believe his best work was behind him. But the Almighty had one more assignment, and it required exactly the kind of emptiness that suffering had carved out.

Sometimes God's greatest work in us begins precisely where our own strength has finally run out.