Named by Grace

In Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, Jean Valjean spends nineteen years in prison, reduced to a number: 24601. When he's finally released, he carries that number like a brand. No inn will take him. No employer will hire him. The prison papers mark him as dangerous, and the world agrees. He knows exactly who he is — a convict, a man beyond redemption.

Then a bishop opens his door. He feeds Valjean, gives him a bed, and when Valjean steals his silver in the night and is dragged back by gendarmes, the bishop does something impossible. He tells the officers he gave the silver freely — then presses the candlesticks into Valjean's trembling hands: "I have bought your soul for God."

That moment breaks Valjean open. Not merely because the bishop forgave him, but because the bishop named him differently. Not 24601. Not convict. A man whose soul belonged to the Almighty.

The rest of the novel is Valjean's long, struggling journey into that new identity — learning to believe what the bishop saw, even when his past hunted him through every chapter.