Tim Robbins plays the lead role in Shawshank Redemption, a Stephen King best seller now ranked 1st in a recent top 100 movies survey. It is a surprisingly redemptive work and as such the movie is also a personal favorite.
Andy Dufresne, having been sentenced to two consecutive life sentences at Shawshank, for a murder he never committed, employs his urbane charm and sharp intellect to become a significant influence in the jail. His influence provides the personal stimulation needed to keep his hopes alive, but also helps to improve the lot of his fellow inmates as they resist the contradictions of an evil warder and his corruptions of the bible.
Behind a poster in his small cell, Andy begins the arduous, twenty-year project of chiseling his way to freedom, using a hand chisel he got from his friend Red Ellis. He eventually breaks through to a narrow alley, which gives him access to the main sewerage channel and the thrall of freedom, which also redeems the many hard years of injustice and thankless toil.
I was reminded of his story, by the simultaneous thoughts of two fellow travelers on the same hard road to spiritual rest. We all share a similar life sentence, which has imprisoned not only us but countless souls in a prison of the mind, which drives us to walk the long, empty wilderness road to find rest for our weary souls.
We embark on the journey because God’s call over us is so compelling, yet we follow not knowing where it will end. Abraham's own long journey ended on the dry knoll of Moriah … where, in signalling the climax of his journeys, God blessed him and his descendants. His grandson walked his own twenty-year journey in pursuit of that blessing, before his journey ended in a life-death struggle against an angel.
David also ended his long dry season of exile from a vengeful king, when he turned back home with the simple idea that it was still better to die in the land of promise than to live amongst the wretched: a decision that coincided with the death of Saul and the commencement of his reign.
Every soul who has walked that journey agrees that God is both compelling and ever faithful. As my friends noted, the journey is like chiseling away at a rock face, knowing that even if it takes decades, the wall will yield. We are driven by a fierce conviction that once we see but a crack of light, it will not be long before we will step into the daylight of freedom and the redemption of our locust years.
Many of the souls I engage daily are on their own respective journeys, wondering if and when it will end. But neither angels nor principalities, life or death, things present or yet to come, height or depth or anything else, will ever disengage us from the compelling need to push through, until we find what we are looking for.
All I can say to those needing hope is that you will never know how close you are to breakthrough in your life, until you hit the chisel the last time.
(c) Peter Eleazar @ http://www.4u2live.net/
Image source: Images from the movie
No comments:
Post a Comment