Brahms Requiem

This past weekend was the Brahms Requiem concert. There were also some rehearsals leading up to it with a middle school choir lock-in between. Yeah, it was a busy weekend.

I came away from the weekend with this song in my head, "Denn alles fleisch," the second movement from the Requiem. It is absolutely glorious.


It begins very foreboding and ominous. "All flesh is like grass, and all magnificence of mortals like the grasses' flowers. The grass has dried up and the flower fallen off." Dark imagery. But it's true. The temporal things of this world will be burned up.

Then there's a huge change. "So be patient, dear brothers, until the future of the Lord. Behold, a husbandman waits for the precious fruit of the earth and is patient about it until he receives the morning rain." The Lord Jesus is coming for His bride, and we don't know when that will be, so we must wait patiently, bearing with the fallen brokenness of the world, knowing it will not last forever.

Then it goes back into the darker music, repeating the "all flesh is like grass" text.


THEN... This part! "But the Lord's Word remains in eternity! The redeemed of the Lord will again come, and to Zion with shouts of joy. Joy, joy, eternal joy will upon their heads be. Joy and delight will seize them, and sorrow and sighing will have to go away. The redeemed of the Lord will again come, and to Zion with shouts of joy. Joy, joy, eternal joy will upon their heads be." Some day we will inhabit a new earth with Christ Jesus, the Lord of all, and we will experience eternal joy.


The depth of this text, all sung in German, hit me like a ton of bricks during our rehearsal the afternoon after the lock-in. I was terribly sleep deprived, and emotionally vulnerable, and I couldn't help but weep as we practiced this movement with the orchestra. It was so very moving.

I worshiped. I may have been the only one in that whole place having a moment with God. It was amazing. Praise the Lord! I love it when He speaks to me like this. It's so very personal.