Nineteen Years Through the Dark

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne is an innocent man sentenced to life in prison. From his early years at Shawshank, he begins quietly chipping away at the concrete wall of his cell with a rock hammer no bigger than a man's fist — hiding the evidence behind a poster of Rita Hayworth. Night after night, year after year, he chips in secret. Nobody knows. Nobody sees. And yet he keeps going.

Nineteen years later, he crawls through five hundred yards of sewage pipe to emerge on the other side — arms raised, face to the sky, rain pouring down, finally free.

That image has lodged itself into the human imagination because it names something deep in us: the belief that patient, hidden faithfulness eventually breaks through.

The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians 6:9, "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." The key phrase is in due season — not our season. Not when we think the breakthrough should come. But it comes.

There are seasons in the Christian life when you feel like you are chipping away at something enormous and nothing seems to be changing. You pray. You serve. You trust. And the wall looks exactly the same as it did last year.

Keep chipping. The Most High sees every stroke in the dark. Your breakthrough is being carved out, one faithful day at a time.