One of my pet peeves is when college students do not participate in the amazing small town community in which they live. For example, Monday nights at the Lyric feature just $5.00 for a movie ticket and FREE popcorn!
This past week I finally saw Les Miserables! It was an amazingly powerful and emotional movie. Now, I have not personally done the research, but I imagine that there are blogs upon blogs on the spiritual messages of Les Mis. Perhaps you have read them, or perhaps prior to the 2012 film, you were privy to a Sunday sermon in which a clip from the 1998 film with Liam Neeson was used. Maybe you are familiar with the story or maybe not. Either way, there are just a few spiritual promptings that stuck out to me:
1. Do you identify yourself by a number? 24601 was Jean Valjean’s prison number and he was often solely referred to as this number by Inspector Javert. We might not relate to a prison number, but do you identify yourself by another number? Maybe your GPA, your weight, your salary (or projected salary), or the number of Facebook friends you have?
2. This past Sunday, we started the Seven Deadly Sins series by focusing on PRIDE. How does pride impact your life in relationship to accepting that God has freely paid your debt? I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but there is a man in this movie that most definitely cannot accept the graciousness of another (especially when he has habitually wronged that man) to the point where he … just kidding! I won’t give it away.
3. How has your relationship with God transformed your life? Even those who haven’t seen the movie or read the book (after all it was a classic before it appeared on Broadway or became a motion picture) have perhaps heard of the scene with the Bishop, Jean Valjean, and the candlesticks. After the generous act of the Bishop, keeping Jean Valjean from returning to prison, Valjean chose to live his life differently, offering grace, generosity, and forgiveness to those he encountered.
I’m sure this list could go on. Have you seen Les Miserables? Or is there another movie that you have seen recently that made you give fresh thought to your relationship with God?
~ Jeanette