{"id":5084,"date":"2025-12-04T08:57:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5084"},"modified":"2025-12-04T08:57:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T13:57:06","slug":"sacrificial-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/04\/sacrificial-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacrificial Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n


\u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder ways that we can ready ourselves to receive Jesus, once again, into our own hearts.<\/em>

Victor Hugo\u2019s 1862 masterpiece Les Miserables<\/em> (roughly translated \u201cThe Wretched Ones\u201d) is one of the longest novels ever written.

Standard print editions approach 3,000 pages. Hugo\u2019s account of the lives of multiple characters \u2013 some good and some villainous \u2013 set against the turmoil of post-revolutionary France in the early 1800s, is not light beach reading.

But the story has proven to be irresistible.

Hugo himself wrote that his book depicted \u201ca progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God\u2026[and] the angel at the end.\u201d

Many people, no doubt, assume Les Miserables<\/em> (or Les Mis<\/em>, as it\u2019s come to be called) is basically the 2-hour-50-minute musical that burst onto the global scene in 1980. But that is merely one adaptation of Hugo\u2019s masterwork. Between 1909 and 2025, the primary storyline has inspired at least 22 feature films.

All of them focus on Jean Valjean, a \u201ccriminal\u201d sentenced to prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child. After 19 years of confinement, he re-enters the world as a bitter man.

A generous soul named Bishop Myriel offers him hospitality. Valjean repays his kindness by stealing the silverware, even knocking the cleric out when he walks in on his larceny.

Valjean flees but doesn\u2019t get far. Soldiers bring him back to the scene of the crime, where a single word from the bishop will send him back to prison for the rest of his life.

To the surprise of everyone \u2013 Jean Valjean above all \u2013 the bishop insists that the silverware had actually been a gift<\/em> to this broken man. \u201cBut why didn\u2019t you also take the candlesticks?\u201d he asks Valjean. They would fetch far more cash than the tableware.

When the two are alone, Bishop Myriel looks at him eye to eye \u2013 perhaps as no one has done for almost two decades. \u201cAnd don\u2019t forget,\u201d he says. \u201cDon\u2019t ever forget<\/em>. You\u2019ve promised to become a new man.\u201d Valjean asks, incredulously, \u201cPromised? Why are you doing this?\u201d The bishop replies, \u201cWith this silver, I\u2019ve bought your soul. I\u2019ve ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.\u201d

Valjean\u2019s life is never the same after this moment \u2013 one of the most transcendent in all of literature. Valjean is saved by grace \u2013 transformed by someone else\u2019s sacrificial kindness. Here\u2019s how <\/a>it plays out in the 1998 film version, starring Liam Neeson.

Christmas is a love story.

Like all love stories, there is a sacrifice somewhere at the center of things. Someone has to surrender something precious so someone else can be blessed.

For instance, the only way for children to become healthy adults is for loving parents to surrender a gigantic portion of their time, their resources, and their energy. Author Timothy Keller points out that if moms and dads refuse to make such sacrifices, their kids will pay the price by being emotionally damaged.

Either way, someone has to pay.<\/em>

If you choose to spend time with an emotionally anguished person, it\u2019s going to cost you something.\u00a0At some level you\u2019ll feel drained. You will give away some of your fullness so they won\u2019t feel so empty.\u00a0

And you\u2019ll wonder from time to time if you\u2019re really making a difference.

Anyone who has ever made a positive impact on your life \u2013 a coach, a spouse, a teacher, a mentor, a pastor, a friend \u2013 gave something up so you could be blessed, so you didn\u2019t have to face something that was quite so hard.\u00a0It\u2019s likely that a number of someones over the years have given you the equivalent of the bishop\u2019s candlesticks so you could belong more fully to God.

That\u2019s what love is all about.

In the love story of Jesus\u2019 birth, it\u2019s impossible to overstate the sacrificial courage of Mary.

When Mary says Yes to the angel Gabriel\u2019s announcement that she will bring the Messiah into the world, she\u2019s also saying No.

She\u2019s saying goodbye to her reputation.\u00a0Unmarried, expectant teenagers in first century Israel didn\u2019t get a guest spot on MTV\u2019s 16 and Pregnant.\u00a0<\/em>They and their families got scorn and misunderstanding instead.\u00a0

Mary is losing the honor game \u2013 the most important game in town.\u00a0In an \u201chonor culture\u201d like that of the Middle East (then and now), people assume that only a finite amount of honor exists.\u00a0There\u2019s not enough to go around.\u00a0If one person\u2019s public esteem goes up, someone else\u2019s has to go down.\u00a0

Because Mary\u2019s child will be publicly identified as a mamzer<\/em> \u2013 the Hebrew term for a child from an illicit relationship \u2013 she and Jesus and Joseph will live under a cloud of shame for the rest of their lives, an association almost impossible to eradicate.\u00a0 \u00a0

Mary is likewise saying no to her dreams of a quiet, pain-free life.\u00a0After Jesus is born, a wise old man named Simeon will tell her that raising God\u2019s Son will involve great suffering.\u00a0\u201cA sword will pierce your soul,\u201d he assures her (Luke 2:35).\u00a0This is not the kind of sentiment that inspires a new line of Christmas cards.

Why does she say Yes?

Mary, who would no doubt have been dismissed in her own time as a nobody from Nowheresville, intuitively understands what so many of history\u2019s brightest, best-educated figures never seem to comprehend:\u00a0

True love always involves sacrifice<\/em>. The only real issue is whom or what we will discern is actually worth living and dying for.

Years later, one of the followers of Mary\u2019s son will write this:

\u201cThis is love:\u00a0not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice for our sins\u201d (I John 4:10).\u00a0

The musical Les Mis<\/em> will never be mistaken as a mere recitation of Victor Hugo\u2019s words.

But the lyricists definitely got this line right: \u201cTo love another person is to see the face of God.\u201d<\/em>

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u00a0Are you ready for Christmas? During the season of Advent \u2013 which annually begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and leads up to December 25 \u2013 followers of Jesus traditionally look for ways to prepare themselves for the coming of God\u2019s own Son into the world. Throughout December we\u2019ll ponder… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,1042,104,115,208],"class_list":["post-5084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grace","tag-les-miserables","tag-love","tag-mary","tag-sacrifice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5086,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions\/5086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}