I once heard Handel’s Messiah performed at the Royal Albert Hall, with the majestic pipe organ there, with orchestra and combined choirs of hundreds of voices. It was … glorious.

Every year our church tries to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Painful. Very, very painful.

Life feels like that to me. There is amazing music to it – you can hear it in your head, and hear notes and phrases of it around you * … but it falls so far short of what you know it could be. We are so out of tune, off the rhythm of what we know we can be. I am so out of tune and off the rhythm that I can hear in my head from time to time. Painful. Very, very painful.

I am very glad to know that in the end, Jesus wins – and we will get to be part of the combined choir: human beings and this creation as we dream it, as God dreamed it. Won’t that be a relief?

The Spirit and the Bride say “Come!”

*Here are a few I have seen lately: friends and neighbors bringing meals to Laurie’s family … giant golden maple leaves decorating the trail at Washington Park, Malisa and Brian dancing at their wedding, a practically perfect apple pie (even if I do say so myself), friends who pray.