Another blessing in spending time with family and friends over the course of the past month is hearing the ways God is working in your lives. I'm delighted to share this guest post written by my brother Carl, a man who seeks after God's own heart:
One of the most
significant contributors to my view of God is Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.
Ever since my first encounter with the book, its potent themes have haunted
me continuously. I’ve never read anything else that portrays so piercingly what
God’s love looks like when experienced, then faithfully expressed by a human
being.
My favorite passage in all of literature takes place near the beginning
of the book, when the fugitive Jean Valjean is welcomed into the bishop’s home,
no questions asked, but treated as a brother and an honored guest. Then,
responding to the bishop’s warm hospitality by stealing his silver in the night,
Valjean is apprehended by the police and summarily returned to the bishop’s home
to face recrimination and certain return to prison.
Then, in the most shocking,
impossibly wonderful scene, the bishop declares to the police that the silver
was a gift and he incredibly underscores the assertion by adding silver
candlesticks to the “gift,” implying that Valjean had simply forgotten to take
them with the rest. The remainder of the book then portrays Valjean’s
thoroughgoing repentance and its fruits in the lives of
others.
Of course Hugo’s
work is fiction, but I find more truth here than in almost any factual account
I’ve ever seen. I grew up viewing God as essentially angry and in need of
placation, thus my need to repent to produce that effect. Hugo has helped me
immensely in knowing that it’s the goodness of God that produces repentance, not
the judgment of God (as Javert would have it).
God’s movements of love, as
mirrored also by the Prodigal Son’s father, not only precede repentance but are
even performed in the face of absurd odds that they will ever bear
fruit.
In this emerging
realization, I’m growing in gratefulness to and amazement of God. That holy
magic of God’s love is intoxicating me.
Don't you see
how wonderfully kind, tolerant and patient God is with you?
Does this mean
nothing to you?
Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from
your sin?
Romans 2:4
(NLT)
-Carl Grant
2 comments:
This is a great commentary. I've always loved the book and the way it portrays God's mercy and grace, as well as the fruits of repentance. We're not so different from Jean Valjean when he steals that silver after being treated as an honored guest...
Thank you Carl, for sharing this! Such a great analogy. It seems too good, doesn't it? And the same good news that saved us is the same good news we live in all the days of our lives. As we live in His Holy Spirit, rivers of living water are flowing from Him, through us and outward, supernaturally producing fruit. We are way beyond blessed!
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