Les Miserables - Song in My Heart

I've shed several tears over the Christmas break. If you know me very well, there's really no surprise there. I'm a pretty emotional person- we won't blame hormones just yet! 
My mama cried when we left her house over Christmas, and I cried. I started to take down the Christmas tree and my eyes went straight to an ornament of Pruitt, and I cried. I watched a video of a teacher friend getting engaged on Christmas, and of course, I cried.
Let's not even mention all the sappy Hallmark movies I watched over the break or the episodes of Parenthood I tried to catch up on- and I cried. 
When I went to see Les Miserables, I turned and went back to get a couple of napkins to have handy, not knowing the storyline, but having heard it was depressing. (FYI- if you are going to cry at the movies, don't use the brown napkins! Too hard!)

Anyway, once I got past the fact that they were going to sing EVERY line (sorry, I didn't know it was an opera!), I found myself entangled in the storyline, and trying to hang on to every word they sang. The whole thing really was moving, and I'll probably see it again.

Many parts got to me, especially the very end, but also the part where Marius is singing after surviving the attack on the barricade. These words stood out to me most:
There's a grief that can't be spoken. There's a pain goes on and on. Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone...Here they sang about `tomorrow' and tomorrow never came...That I live and you are gone. There's a grief that can't be spoken. There's a pain goes on and on.

Immediately my mind went to the story I heard after the Connecticut shooting at Sandy Hook- the story of the one little girl that survived the shooting in her classroom. As we get ready to go back to school this week, I thought about what it must be like for her, to have to go back with none of her classmates there, not to mention her teachers and principal. 

This morning's message was about having a song to sing. The minister read Ephesians 5:19 which says, "Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord." I instantly thought back to Les Mis as they sang every line, and that this verse says we are to speak to one another with songs. I don't know if the Lord meant put a tune to every word, but I do believe it means that those of us who have been redeemed have a song to sing, and we SHOULD be singing it! 

One of my New Year's Prayers is to strive to "Let my life song sing to You," as one Christian group put it. I also pray that the song in my heart will be one of hope and truth in Christ and that I will sing it out as I go from day to day. I also pray that little girl will find a song in her heart to be able to sing, even in the hardest of days ahead. Maybe someone else's song will fill her ears and share with her the Hope of our risen Savior and Lord. 

Marius' song was a sad one. In the context of the movie, you wouldn't expect anything else. But what if this year, we claim the word that says, "He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and hear and put their trust in the Lord." Psalms 40:3

Only God can put His new song in us, but when He does, others hear it, and it's a melody they won't forget because it it leads them to Him.