Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Lessons Learned from Les Miserables

I am miserable!  I'm miserable because I am being challenged. Often a challenge is a good thing.  It gets the blood flowing, the brain stimulated, but I suppose it depends on the struggle.  Currently, I feel like my capacity for grace is being challenged, and I don't like it.  If you have kept up with my posts, I'm kind of exhausted.  I think my grace needle is on empty.  I have prayed about this, but I am floundering with my hearing as well. I know God is there, I just cannot quite tune into His frequency lately.  So, I find myself drawing from literature.

I never liked reading as a teen, until tenth grade English Lit class, after reading the classic fiction, Victor Hugo's, Les Miserables.  I didn't read this book because I decided I wanted to enjoy this now favorite pastime.  I read it, voraciously I might add, because many upper class-men told me the book was terrible.  Ah! A challenge of the other variety!   An opportunity to defy authority figures, in the ill-gotten gains of high school status wars.  Prove them wrong. After all, every authority figure in my life let me down so far, or so I perceived.  I was all about defiance, non-conformity and boldness.  In a week, however, I was a pile of mush curled up under my covers, with a flashlight, crying over the final separation of Jean Valjean, the former prisoner, and the policeman who hunted him over seventeen years.  In an act of unfathomable grace, Valjean saves him, when he could have left him for dead.

So much like our Father who sent his son, Jesus, to save us not despite our sin, but because of it!  Imagine!  We cannot.

Someone, a friend, tests me, beyond reason.  I am exhausted.  I do not believe I have the grace to give or give up any more than I have. Yet, I am drawn back to this book, to another scene.  In the beginning, Jean Valjean is first freed from prison.  He spends the night with a Bishop and takes advantage of his gracious hospitality, stealing the fine silver, then jetting out at dawn.  Caught, looking again at prison time, Valjean experiences his first encounter of grace, as the Bishop, aware of the betrayal, appears and offers the silver candlesticks as well.  All were a gift; there is no crime. Valjean receives his second chance.

We worship a God of second chances, and we are called to give them as freely as He does, as the Bishop did, as Valjean learned to do, so those who take advantage of our kindnesses and mercy, our grace, may someday become dispensers of it.

In Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, we are given clear instruction for what to do when others test us, in big ways and in little.  Be it our patience or our pocketbooks, we are called to be gracious.


'If someone strikes you, stand there and take it.  If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, gift wrap your best coat and make a present of it.  And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life.  No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.' 
"...When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does.  He gives his best -- the sun to warm and the rain to nourish -- to everyone, regardless: the good  and bad, the nice and nasty.  If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that.  If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that." 
"...Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."Matthew 5:39-48, the Msg


As the Wisteria drapes the spring trees of Atlanta in royal garment, so shall I cling to my vine, our Heavenly Father, and learn the lessons of Les Miserables and Christ Jesus, lessons of grace -- the only way to relieve the misery of being taken for granted, having your patience tested, or as our Bosnian friends have known too well, experiencing persecution.

Thank you for your continued prayers for the people of the ECC of Capljina, Bosnia who are powerful examples of dispensers of grace in a diversified culture. They reach the Jean Valjeans of their communities and introduce them to our God of second chances. Please pray for their strength and commitment to their cause and the ongoing health and support of their congregation.

In the grip of His grace,
Kathy