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.