{"id":38969,"date":"2018-12-03T08:23:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T08:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/grad-student-saved-by-lyrics-from-handels-messiah\/"},"modified":"2018-12-03T08:23:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T08:23:00","slug":"grad-student-saved-by-lyrics-from-handels-messiah","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/grad-student-saved-by-lyrics-from-handels-messiah\/","title":{"rendered":"Grad Student Saved by Lyrics from Handel\u2019s Messiah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the 1960s Mary Ellen Rothrock was a grad student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1998 she wrote in <em>Christian Reader<\/em> magazine:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Despair seemed to permeate the student body, especially those in the humanities. A fellow graduate student summed it up cynically, &quot;Playwright Samuel Becket is right. Man is just a piece of trash in a universe that&#39;s running down.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>In college, atheism became my religion. Yet when I got into grad school, I found myself seeking to fill a spiritual void in my life. I began practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM). I met periodically with a TM supervisor. After a year or so of meditating, I mentioned that I had a recurring thought when I was trying to concentrate on my mantra. &lsquo;It&#39;s a line from Handel&#39;s <em>Messiah<\/em>. Something in my mind keeps repeating &ldquo;And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>To my young mind, not only was the music thrilling, but the words seemed to come from beyond this world. I loved the joyful language: &lsquo;Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. &#8230; For unto us a Child is born &hellip; And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.;&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Her TM supervisor told her to ignore the words that kept coming to her but &ldquo;I told myself, &lsquo;These aren&#39;t just random thoughts.&rsquo; It suddenly hit me. The phrase <em>And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed<\/em> was an invitation from a personal God of glory to seek him! Why couldn&#39;t he be &lsquo;Wonderful, Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace?&rsquo;<\/p>\n\n<p>Within months, she met a woman who explained how she could have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. She said, &ldquo;As I heard the words from the Bible, the words from the musical score made sense. The Holy Spirit convinced me of the truth: the God I&#39;d hungered for, the personal God, loved me. &lsquo;Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.&rsquo;&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"> <\/h2>","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3387,3450,3497,3517,3600,3861,4168,4194,4232,4448,4463,4506,4749,4877,4907,5306],"tax_ctp_topics":[394,396],"class_list":["post-38969","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-advent","tax_ctp_tags-atheism","tax_ctp_tags-birth-of-christ","tax_ctp_tags-born-again","tax_ctp_tags-christmas","tax_ctp_tags-emptiness","tax_ctp_tags-hopelessness","tax_ctp_tags-hunger","tax_ctp_tags-incarnation-of-christ","tax_ctp_tags-meditation","tax_ctp_tags-messiah","tax_ctp_tags-music","tax_ctp_tags-pursuing-sinners","tax_ctp_tags-salvation","tax_ctp_tags-seeking-god","tax_ctp_tags-worship-music"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grad Student Saved by Lyrics from Handel\u2019s Messiah - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/grad-student-saved-by-lyrics-from-handels-messiah\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grad Student Saved by Lyrics from Handel\u2019s Messiah - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the 1960s Mary Ellen Rothrock was a grad student in English literature at the University of Wisconsin. In 1998 she wrote in Christian Reader magazine: Despair seemed to permeate the student body, especially those in the humanities. A fellow graduate student summed it up cynically, &quot;Playwright Samuel Becket is right. 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