Dispatches from Home – Les Misérables. Bitter Memories and Sweet Ones.

I’ve just finished watching the movie version of this magnificent musical and, once again, was swept up in the beauty and majesty of its music and story of redemption. As I listened, I could not help but remember the first time I saw this delectable feast of sights and sounds.

That was twenty years ago, come June, and little did I know, as I sat in that darkened theater, that my life was about to take a turn down a long, dark path that eventually led to my complete collapse; a time when I thought death was sweeter than life. But like Jean Valjean’s long struggle for redemption, I found my way to the end of that dark path,

I rediscovered the people who meant the world to me – my loving family, my loving friends, but most of all, the God who loved me enough to send His only Son to die for my sins. And because He did, I may “dream a dream” of times gone by, but know that because of God there is “one day more.”

That grand and glorious day when He will call me Home, where, like Jean Valjean, I will be forever redeemed, forever loved, and forever know that “to love another person is to see the face of God.” To love…as God first loved us!

(Originally posted April 25, 2013)