Handel's...a Messiah...and God's universe is heard through the music.

When a nobleman once praised Handel as to how entertaining Messiah was, Handel replied, "My lord, I should be sorry if I only entertained them; I wished to make them better."

Oh...that there are times that a man sees God...and oh that such a vision would transport generations to sit at the side of their creator and for a moment know the face of God...

In a small London house on Brook Street, a servant sighs with resignation as he arranges a tray full of food he assumes will not be eaten. For more than a week, he has faithfully continued to wait on his employer, an eccentric composer, who spends hour after hour isolated in his own room. Morning, noon, and evening the servant delivers appealing meals to the composer and returns later to find the bowls and platters largely untouched.
Once again, he steels himself to go through the same routine, muttering under his breath about how oddly temperamental musicians can be. As he swings open the door to the composer’s room, the servant stops in his tracks.

The startled composer, tears streaming down his face, turns to his servant and cries out, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself.” George Frederic Handel had just finished writing a movement that would take its place in history as the Hallelujah Chorus.

We all have moments when we stumble...we fall. We are afterall imperfect...from a perfect creator...but...when I listen to this music...I feel the perfection of God's hand...and this hand is the one that is holding mine tonight...so join me in the love of music...and be transported with me...

Some Thoughts on Handel: Resilience

When reviewing the lives of great figures in history, it is tempting to focus only on the results of their lives, glossing over the periods between the masterpieces they produced. Because “the end of the story” is a matter of record, it may be difficult to appreciate the struggles that threatened to make the story far shorter. In Handel’s case especially, had he not possessed an amazing ability to bounce back from repeated disaster, such well-loved works as Messiah and the Royal Fireworks Music would have never been written.
How often Handel must have felt like giving up! What fits of depression his many failures would have caused an average composer. To a man who knew he had but one great talent, seeing that talent go unrewarded so often must have been profoundly perplexing. And to see other London composers, whom he knew to have less genius, enjoying the success that eluded him for so many years—must have driven Handel to extreme exasperation. Yet through al the frustrating years before his final successes, Handel simply refused to quit.
And, as if blows inflicted by his competitors were not painful enough, Handel suffered from an onslaught of attacks within his own camp. For a devoted Christian to have come under censure by the principal church of his time must have been bitterly distressing. Even after Messiah was becoming well known, as great a religious figure as John Newton (composer of the hymn “Amazing Grace”), preached every Sunday for over a year against the “secular” performances of this biblical oratorio. Yet Handel did not respond by counterattacking his Anglican brothers. Though he remained a Lutheran, he “would often speak of it as one of the great felicities of his life that he was settled in a country where no man suffers any molestation or inconvenience on account of his religious principles.”
Handel refused to be deterred by setbacks, attacks, illnesses, or even severe financial woes. It is a tribute to the faith and optimism Handel possessed, relying on God as he worked to overcome significant obstacles and to create music that is universally cherished today.