Hearing the Whisper of God
For Shirley’s birthday, we visited Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre to see Les Mis. It is at least the fifth time we’ve enjoyed this musical. Watching it yet again, my mind returned to chapters 7 and 19 of Soul Physicians where I use the story to illustrate Satan’s scheme and our victory in Christ.
Satan’s Lying Narrative
Satan conspires to trick us into viewing God as Javert. In Victor Hugo’s classic work Les Miserables, Jean Val Jean is imprisoned for sixteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving family. Javert is his self-righteous, legalistic prison guard.
Upon his release, Jean Val Jean is unable to find work. Destitute, he spends a night in the tiny home of a Bishop who treats him with respect and provides him with a meal. During the night, Val Jean steals the Bishop’s silver candlesticks.
The next day the French police drag Val Jean back to the Bishop’s home. “We found this thief with your possessions!”
“Jean Val Jean, you left without taking the other gifts I had offered you,” the Bishop replies as he hands Jean additional valuables. Val Jean is shocked, and changed—changed by grace. He begins to live a life of grace, caring for others. Eventually he becomes the owner of a factory and then the mayor of a French town.
But Javert hunts him down. At every turn he reminds him of his past. At one point he shouts repeatedly, “24601!” the prison uniform number Jean Val Jean had worn for over a decade-and-a-half. Val Jean is less than human. A number only. Javert exposes Jean Val Jean’s past to the townspeople and attempts to arrest him for parole violation. Shamed, Jean Val Jean runs. Taking matters into his own hands, he does not trust Javert, nor should he.
Satan desires us to imagine God as the spitting image of Javert. If Satan is successful, then, of course, we will run. We will take matters into our own hands. Whenever we mistrust God’s good heart, we always trust our own fallen hearts.
God’s Grace Narrative
I had asked Terri, a missionary I was counseling, to watch Les Miserables. She was struck by Jean Val Jean’s response to the scene with the Bishop of Digne.
“I was floored by the scene right after the police released Val Jean. The Bishop sings, ‘By the witness and the martyrs, by the passion and the blood, I have bought your soul for God. Now become an honest man. See in this some higher plan.’ Val Jean, amazed by grace, changed by grace, then concludes the scene by singing, ‘another story must begin.’”
Terri continued.
“Now everything that happens to me, I’m looking for God’s higher plan. I’m setting my thoughts on things above—always wondering what God might be up to in this. For me, another story must begin—God’s story that doesn’t obliterate my painful story, but that gives it meaning.”
God Is Good: He’s Good All the Time
What Terri perceived in Jean Val Jean’s life, Joseph experienced in his life.
“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:19-20).
Joseph uses “intended” both for his brothers’ plans and God’s purposes. The Hebrew word has a very tangible sense of to weave, to plait, to interpenetrate as in the weaving together of fabric to fashion a robe, perhaps even a coat of many colors. It was also used in a negative, metaphorical sense to suggest a malicious plot, the devising of a cruel scheme. Other times the Jews used “intended” to symbolically picture the creation of some new and beautiful purpose or result through the weaving together of seemingly haphazard, miscellaneous, or malicious events.
“Life is bad,” Joseph admits. “You plotted against me for evil. You intended to spoil or ruin something wonderful.”
“God is good,” Joseph insists. “God wove good out of evil,” choosing a word for “good” that is the superlative of pleasant, beautiful. That is, God intended to create beauty from ashes.
Joseph discovers healing through God’s grace narrative. Further, he offers his blundering brothers tastes of grace.
“And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt” (Genesis 45:5-8).
Amazing! I hope you caught the words. “To save lives,” “to preserve,” “by a great deliverance.” That’s a grace narrative, a salvation narrative. Had God not preserved a remnant of Abraham’s descendants, then Jesus would never have been born. Joseph uses his spiritual eyes to see God’s great grace purposes in saving not only Israel and Egypt, but also the entire world.
I hope you also caught Joseph’s repetition. “God sent me.” “God sent me ahead of you.” “It was not you who sent me here, but God.” Joseph sees the smaller story of human scheming for ruin. However, Joseph perceives that God trumps that smaller scheme with his larger purpose by weaving beauty out of ugly.
Life hurts. Wounds penetrate. Without grace narratives, hopelessness and bitterness flourish. With a grace narrative, hope and forgiveness flow and perspective grows.
Instead of our perspective shrinking, suffering is the exact time when we must listen most closely, when we must lean over to hear the whisper of God. True, God shouts to us in our pain, but his answers, as with Elijah, often come to us in whispered still small voices amid the thunders of the world.
Join the Conversation
Whose narrative are you listening to today? What image of God are you clinging to today?
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