The Tunnel That Took Nineteen Years

In the film The Shawshank Redemption, a man named Andy Dufresne sits in a prison cell he didn't deserve. Wrongly convicted of murder, he faces walls that were never meant to hold him. But instead of surrendering to despair, Andy does something remarkable — night after night, year after year, he chips away at the concrete behind a poster with a rock hammer no bigger than your fist. He hides the dust in his pockets and scatters it across the prison yard. No one notices. Nothing appears to change.

For nineteen years, he perseveres in secret.

Then one rainy night, the wall finally gives way. Andy crawls five hundred yards through a sewer pipe and emerges on the other side — free, drenched, arms stretched wide toward the storm-lit sky.

The Apostle Paul knew something about that kind of endurance. "We also glory in our sufferings," he wrote, "because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope" (Romans 5:3–4). The Almighty rarely delivers us over the wall — He more often leads us through it, one faithful stroke at a time.

Maybe you are in the middle of your tunnel right now. The work feels invisible. The progress is imperceptible. The people around you have no idea what quiet faithfulness is costing you. But God sees every strike of the hammer. He is not absent in your waiting — He is present in it, shaping something in you that easy rescue could never produce.

Keep chipping. The morning is coming.