When Andy Dufresne Crawled Through the Dark

In The Shawshank Redemption, there is a moment that still takes my breath away. Andy Dufresne has spent nineteen years chipping through a concrete wall with a rock hammer no bigger than his palm. Nineteen years of hiding the evidence, nineteen years of enduring brutality, nineteen years of working toward something no one else could see. And then comes the night he finally breaks through — only to find himself crawling through five hundred yards of raw sewage pipe in absolute darkness. He cannot see the end. He cannot turn back. He can only keep moving forward through the filth, believing that freedom waits on the other side.

When he finally bursts out into that creek bed and lifts his face to the rain, arms spread wide — that is the image of faith fulfilled.

But here is what strikes me most: Andy started crawling before he could see daylight. He committed his whole body to that pipe with nothing but the conviction that the wall had an other side.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is not waiting until we can see the exit. Faith is entering the tunnel. It is trusting that the God who put the longing for freedom in your heart has also prepared the way through.

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