Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleeelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleeelujah
~From Handel’s Messiah
by Georg Friedrich Händel

To one who has long been in the throes of confining heat,
‘tis very sweet to look into the fair and open face of heaven–
to breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue firmament.
~Adapted excerpt by John Keats

Okay, so I realize I’m probably committing some heinous sacrilege with these revered excerpts as they relate to my topic, but there is just no better or more accurate way to describe how I feel about what was outside my door this morning. I’d long waited and waited for it, I’d long prayed and prayed for it, and I’d long shed tears over its delay. But now at long last today it has arrived. So when I opened the door and felt that first autumn chill in the air, there was simply nothing else I could do but joyfully and thankfully throw my arms up and break into a hallelujah chorus. And it didn’t matter whether it was my own “couldn’t-carry-a-tune-in-a-bucket” rendition, a squirrel’s rendition, or an opera star’s rendition! But my shamefulness didn’t just end there. It got worse! For on the heels of the hallelujah chorus I then emitted a most diabolic and wrongfully wicked laugh at the thought of the “Heat Monster’s” impending and hopefully terrible demise! Yes, folks I am apparently a complete degenerate, but I could not help myself then nor now. So praise the Lord and hallelujah that autumn is finally throwing off her meekness and moving full throttle into this wretched place. I feel like an incarcerated prisoner who has been set free and instead of having the breath sucked out of me by suffocating and prolonged mugginess, thank you, God that I can once again “breathe a prayer full in the smile of the blue” and cool “firmament!”

Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from anguish. ~Psalm 25:17  ✝

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