Lessons from Fantine

     A few weeks ago, I led a funeral service for a young man who was shot and killed in an apparent drug deal gone bad. The young man went to a location thinking he was making a deal but was robbed instead.
     At the service, as you might imagine, the young man's friends showed up in all their diversity. There were plenty of tattoos and piercings, and people from all walks of life.
     If I am honest, I struggled with judgment. In my mind, I was tempted to write many of these individuals off before even getting to know them. God showed me on this day that he is about the business of saving and redeeming all kinds of people who have all types of stories.
     In Les Miserables, Fantine is a woman who has a child out of wedlock (in 19th century France). After she is fired from her factory job and thrown into the street, she resorts to a life of prostitution. Her soul is stolen in a moment. All of the dreams she had in life are shattered by this one decision. If you have time, download the song "I Dreamed a Dream" from the soundtrack and listen closely to the words. It is the song of a girl who has lost her soul and wants it back.
     It seems to me that there are a lot of lost souls who want a new life in Christ. There are drug dealers, thieves, porn stars, prostitutes, and all types of people who don't like the life they are living but don't know how to get out. There are others, of course, who are quite content to live in this garbage. My heart is touched for this first group of people who want out but don't know how to get out.
     How can we, as the Church, open ourselves to helping these people? How do we get dirty in this mud and yet not get stained? The first step, the most important step, is to open our hearts and to begin to feel compassion for them.
     If you would like to develop a heart for one group of these people, women who have resorted to a career in the adult film industry, I recommend a Web site to you, http://iamatreasure.com/. It is full of personal testimonies of women like Fantine who have found Christ in the depths of their sin.
    If our hearts will be touched and if we are to begin to have compassion on "those" people, it begins by listening to their stories, because they each have one.