Victor Hugo

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

From a devotion I shared at the AHS Christmas Musical last week:

This time of year frequently combines two things that I really love: Christmas + music = Christmas musicals. The two are a wonderful combination!

I recently came across a quote from Victor Hugo concerning music. Read what he had to say:

"Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent."

It's the truth. Music seems like it comes from somewhere deep within us and really connects on an emotional level. I've met people who like lots of different styles of music, but I've never met someone who didn't care for it at all! Music is a universal language.

You're probably familiar with this, but Victor Hugo is also the author of Les Miserables. Les Mis is the story of a man named Jean Valjean and was written in 1862. It's a powerful novel and quite complex, but I wanted to share one particular scene with you:

Jean Valjean has been in prison for nineteen years for a terrible crime—he stole a loaf of bread. After he has been finally released as a parolee, he comes to a Bishop’s house who takes him in for the night. Valjean repays the Bishop’s generosity by promptly stealing the Bishop’s silverware and silver plates and taking off in the darkness.

He’s caught almost immediately by the police and brought back to the Bishop’s home. But when he arrives something strange happens:

The Bishop shocks the reader when, instead of prosecuting Valjean, he insists to the police that he himself gave Valjean the silver. And then the Bishop freely offers Valjean his silver candlesticks too. It's an extraordinary moment of grace. "Valjean is made an honest man through another man’s sacrifice." Valjean doesn't deserve it in any shape or form, but the Bishop's action towards this hardened criminal embodies both mercy and grace. (And Valjean's life is changed because of it.)

Mercy came when Valjean was not given the punishment he deserved for theft, and grace came when he was given something he didn’t deserve: the candlesticks and the rest of the silver that he stole.

Christmas tells us another story, THE STORY of mercy and grace. It tells us of how God himself came to the world—a world full of death and darkness that had rebelled against him—God came and was born as a baby so that he could rescue our world from death.

Christmas is a story of mercy because Jesus, the God-man, did not come to condemn the world because of our rebellion, but to save the world through his death on the cross and his resurrection three days later. He is God’s great rescue plan.

Christmas is a story of grace because we’re given something we don’t deserve: new life and a new beginning. Freedom. Hope. Peace with God. And it’s all made possible through a baby that was born on Christmas day that would one day grow up and die on a cross to take our place—to those who believe in the name of Jesus.