The Man Who Wouldn't Put Him Down

In Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, there is a scene that has stayed with readers for over 160 years. Jean Valjean — a former convict whose life was remade by an act of undeserved grace — hoists the unconscious body of young Marius onto his shoulders and descends into the sewers of Paris. The boy is wounded and dying. The streets above are a war zone. The only way out is through miles of darkness and suffocating stench beneath the city.

Valjean doesn't know if Marius will survive. He doesn't know where the tunnel leads. At one point he sinks into a stretch of underground quicksand and nearly goes under himself. But he never sets the boy down. Step after agonizing step, he carries someone else's future through the worst place imaginable — not because the path is clear, but because love has given him a purpose that outlasts his comfort.

That is the shape of perseverance in the life of faith. Paul wrote, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9). Some seasons of faithfulness feel like walking underground — dark, exhausting, with no visible end. But the Almighty who remade Valjean's life through a bishop's mercy is the same God who sustains yours. Keep walking. Don't set it down.