Because of Javert

We laughed at him, Marie-Claude and I, because of how his expressions never changed and he always talked in the same flat, toneless voice.

But he wasn't really funny.

He was tragic.

He was a man who saw himself as an administer of the law, an upholder of justice.  In reality, he was a slave of the law.  It was all he knew.  His entire existence was consumed with duty and retribution.  He didn't know forgiveness - how to give it nor how to accept it.  Perfection was a shadowy ghost, haunting him at every turn, driving him on mercilessly, always just out of reach.

In the end, unable to live up to his own impossible ideals, he drowned himself.

Out of all the characters in Les Mis, he's the one I find the saddest.  He's a chilling, dramatic illustration of a life without grace.  And he strikes a familiar chord for me.

I wouldn't have ever been a Valjean or a Fantine or an Éponine.  But Javert?  His story hits a little too close to home.

That relentless sense of duty.  That inability to fully accept the forgiveness God offers.  The perfectionism, perfectionism, perfectionism.

As I think of Javert's watery end, the realization makes me want to cry: this is what being a slave to the law leads to.  Death.  Not a literal death, to be sure - at least not in every instance.  But ultimately being a slave to the law can only lead to death.

And that's what I've been rescued from.

From death.  From my own never-enough-ness.  From the burden of the impossible.

I've been set free, for life and hope and freedom and joy and forgiveness.  When I realize where I could be without grace...

What can I even say?