Opera was waning in popularity, and a depressed Handel thought to move from his London home on Brook Street back to Germany. Then in 1741 he was given a manuscript of prophetic passages taken from the Bible about Jesus, the Messiah, by Charles Jennens.
Consumed with putting the Scriptures to music, Handel locked himself away for twenty-four days. A visiting friend found him weeping uncontrollably as he spoke of seeing heavens open and the glory of God.
With all ticket sales benefiting the poor, Handel chose popular, secular artists performing in theaters, not churches, for the masses to hear, not of a distant and disinterested deistic view of God common in that day, “for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
Today, whether performed by choirs in the Sydney Opera House or flash mobs in the Mall of America, Handel’s Messiah, every Christmas still stirs like no other music ever penned.
“Richard, guess who it is?” mum yelled upstairs.
Braking halfway down the rickety stairs,
there he was leaning in our doorway. “If ever I meet my dad, however big he is,
however small I am,” screamed a kid silently,
“I‟m going to run up and hit him as hard as I can!”
And now I‟m no longer a boy.
Dark London night, darker thoughts.
Anyone hurt you?
Christmas can be the darkest time of the year.
Frozen to the stairs, I flashed back two years to a pew and a blind man who opened my eyes to outstretched arms, and to the forgiveness I found there.
Spirit to seed Cathedral to cave Throne to trough Starbursts to sawdust Angels to animals Robe to diaper Everything to nothing God to us He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.
Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!
