In his book The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers,<\/i> Patrick Kavanaugh discusses George Frideric Handel\u2019s musical masterpiece Messiah.<\/i> An unpredictable composer at best, Handel spent much of his up-and-down career moving from one failure to another. In those days declaring bankruptcy wasn\u2019t an option, and by 1741, Handel was drowning in debt. Without a miracle, prison was inevitable. He decided to perform his farewell concert and retire a failure at age fifty-six. But when a friend handed him a libretto on the life of Jesus based on selected Scriptures from the Bible, everything changed. <\/p>\n
Handel threw himself into writing and composing, and in a staggering stretch completed Part One in six days, Part Two in nine days, and Part Three six days later. He worked feverishly, driven by one overwhelming purpose. Servants left meals outside his door, afraid to disturb him. Once, when a servant did find the courage to open the door, the startled composer cried out, with tears streaming down his face, \u2018I think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself!\u2019 He had just finished the much-celebrated \u2018Hallelujah Chorus\u2019.<\/i> <\/p>\n
What a comeback story\u2014and the Bible is filled with them! The first forty-one chapters in the book of Job describe all that he had lost: his health, his wealth, and his family. Then, in the last chapter we read, \u2018The Lord restored his fortunes\u2026 The Lord blessed Job in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning.\u2019<\/i> (Job 42:10\u201312 NLT) <\/p>\n
And what God did for George Frideric Handel, and for Job, He can do for you when you put your life in His hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his book The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, Patrick Kavanaugh discusses George Frideric Handel\u2019s musical masterpiece Messiah. An unpredictable composer at best, Handel spent much of his up-and-down career moving from one failure to another. In those days declaring bankruptcy wasn\u2019t an option, and by 1741, Handel was drowning in debt. Without a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ucbmedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}