Rain and Redemption

In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne spends nearly twenty years wrongfully imprisoned, enduring brutality, injustice, and soul-crushing monotony. But he never stops working toward freedom. Night after night, with nothing but a tiny rock hammer, he chips away at his cell wall — a task so impossibly slow that his friend Red calls it a six-hundred-year project.

Then comes that unforgettable night. Andy crawls through five hundred yards of sewage pipe — through the filth and waste of that broken place — and emerges on the other side into a thunderstorm. He tears off his shirt, lifts his face to the sky, and lets the rain wash over him. He is free. He is restored.

What strikes me about that scene is that restoration didn't come clean. Andy had to pass through the worst of it to reach the other side. The pipe didn't disappear. The rain didn't come before the crawl.

This is how the Almighty so often works. He doesn't always remove the sewage pipe from our path. But He promises that the rain is waiting on the other side. Psalm 71:20 says, "Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again."

Whatever dark passage you're crawling through today, keep moving. The rain is coming.