Well, hello, my friends, and welcome to the Live Inspired podcast Monday morning moments with John O'Leary.

Few stories moved me as powerfully as Victor Hugo's Le Miserables.

Set in the midst of a revolution in France, it is a deeply moving portrait of individuals from

various walks of life, wrestling with grace and with meaning and with redemption, with love,

with lost, ultimately with life. Last month, while watching this play next to my

wife, Beth, it became very clear to me that the main character from Le Miz eliminates not only

how we should live as individuals, but also how we must move forward right now in this moment

as a nation.

And the character that modeled this example to me might not be the one you expect.

Let me explain.

Jean Valjean.

That's the one, right?

Jean Valjean broke a window pane, stole a loaf of bread, and is condemned then to 19 years

in prison for the crime.

Even after the release, his mistakes haunt him in every new endeavor he attempts.

Jane to his past, his journey from bitter criminal living in fear to compassionate servant. Modeling Love makes him one of the greatest

characters in all of literature. But I don't think he's the main character in Le Mise.

Jean Valjean's jailer while in prison, and the nemesis once released is Inspector Javert.

He is the relentless police officer whose inflexible obedience to the

law blinds him to offering mercy, to be in any evidence at all of grace or love. He is the

personification of what happens when we prioritize rules over compassion and bears the exact

opposite traits of the grace-filled man that he's pursuing. And yet, I don't believe Javert is the

...