A number of years ago, the “hot show” on Broadway was Les Miserables. My wife went with her mother and sisters to see it and came back with a bootleg cassette tape of the music. I started listening to the music and tried to understand the story from that recording. But it raised more questions than it answered.
That summer I determined to read Victor Hugo’s masterpiece. Once I started, I couldn’t put it down. The unabridged version. (I confess that I skimmed the chapters on the history of the Paris sewer system and the Battle of Waterloo.) I read the novel in five days on vacation, even taking time to eat, sleep, and play with our daughters. I loved the story and have since seen it on stage several times.
My argument is that this story is about the grace of God as played out in the life of Jean Valjean. Valjean receives grace through the merciful act of a simple village priest, although he never accepts that grace until very late in the narrative. Nevertheless, Valjean functions throughout the story as a channel of God’s grace, sharing and dispensing it to those whose lives cross paths with his.
I think that Paul, as hard as he was on himself, understood that he was both a recipient of God’s mercy as well as one through whom others could learn about God’s grace. It was the gift of God’s grace that changed Paul’s life, which changed my life and even (fictionally) Jean Valjean’s life.
You and I are given the incredible opportunity to tell others about this life-changing grace!