Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption?
No? Ok. Here’s what you do…
Go to iTunes (or whichever digital media service you prefer) and rent or, better yet, buy it. Pop some popcorn (easy butter.. gotta watch that cholesterol). Turn off your phone. Sit down and enjoy one of the greatest movies of all time.
Done? Good. Grab some tissues. Wipe your eyes. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself before we move on.
Now… you won’t really have to have watched the movie to follow what I’m sharing today. I’ll sum the film up for you as best as I can as we go along:
- ALERT!
In the movie a man, Andy Dufresne, is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and given a life sentence to be served at Shawshank Prison. (Quite the heartwarming tale already!) He meets and becomes friends with a fellow prisoner named Red, played by the incomparable Morgan Freeman, and as the years go by he learns that life is very different “on the inside.”
As pressures rise and hopes fade Andy eventually “gets busy living” and enacts a pretty incredible plan to find his freedom (or die trying). I won’t give it all away here. In all seriousness, watch it if you get the chance.
I really love this movie for many reasons. There are several threads of truth that explore the core of the human condition and that pull on the strings of the heart.
One of the most central themes of the film is hope.
There is this tension that runs throughout the film as Andy slowly begins to lose hope day after day attempting to find it again wherever he can and Red, who gave up hope long ago, slowly daring to have it again because of Andy.
It is a beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring story.
I confess that in recent days I’ve been fighting to hold on to hope. It has been a daily battle. In the past, I was always blessed to be able to easily find hope in the situations and circumstances of my life. I’ve had my share of hard days and ups and downs like all of us but, even at the worst of times, I was able to put my trust in the Lord and I never found myself lacking for hope.
That has been much harder lately.
I’m sure the truth is each and everyone one of us, in one situation or another and at one time or another, have found ourselves struggling to find hope. I want to focus this post on hope and what God has to say about it as an encouragement to each one of us, especially at those times when we feel utterly hopeless.
“Hope is a dangerous thing.”
It can be. That seems like such a strange thing to say and maybe on its face it seems untrue, but bear with me for a bit.
Take a look at this clip from The Shawshank Redemption and Red’s feelings on hope when a man is living “on the inside.” (SALTY LANGUAGE WARNING… there is one single use of a term for something that comes from the digestive system of a well fed male bovine in the clip.)
Red is a man who has been in prison a long time. It is all that he knows. He no longer dreams of “places that aren’t made out of stone.” His whole life and worldview is built on what he sees right in front of him every day. There is no reason to hope. This is life. Might as well accept it.
To a man like that, in a place like that, hope can be a very dangerous thing. The flirtation with the possibility of life getting better or circumstances changing always ending disappointingly with the reality of a steel-bared door closing day after day can “drive a man insane.”
Now, I’ve never been in an actual prison for any sort of crime (that you KNOW of…), but I can relate to that feeling of hopelessness. Especially these days. Life has been very hard and due to that difficulty I’ve allowed myself to be imprisoned. Not in some immense cage built with concrete and steel, but a much more subtle prison of my own devising.
This prison is built out of all types of more nefarious materials:
Fear. Loneliness. Doubt. Pain. Negative Body Image. Worry. Heartache. Sickness. Low Self-Esteem. Lies. Betrayal. Debt… and more. Brick by brick these things can build walls all around us.
The times we can bring ourselves to hope they seem to be dashed again and again just like that prison door closing. Disappointment after disappointment teaches us quickly that “hope is a dangerous thing.”
We find ourselves believing that we can only count on ourselves. That no one really cares. That there is no point in trying. That there is no hope.
We may wake up every morning, put a smile on our face, and go out and live like nothing in the world is amiss, but on the inside.. we’re trapped.
I’ve been there. You’ve probably been there. I think we can all agree that it sucks.
So what do we do?
Give up? Accept it? Settle for the walls all around us until we sink into a kind of oxymoron-ic comforting malaise from the familiarity of them? In the end allowing our fears, worries, doubts, etc to define who we are and how we live?
Maybe. A lot of people do. But I know, and I want you to know, that we don’t have to do that. We do not have to be imprisoned. There is hope.
“Hope is a good thing.”
I want to remind you, and to remind myself, of a few truths that can help us have hope and break down these walls that form all around and imprison us.
First, we are not alone.
The Lord promises us something quite profound and simple when life gets tough:
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
-Psalm 34:18
That is the kind of good news I need to be reminded of all the time. When my heart is smashed to pieces… He is there. When life has beat me up and I am absolutely crushed by the day… He is there. He promises to be there. He promises that again and again throughout His Word:
God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.
-Psalm 46:1-3
Lately I have to remind myself of that daily. God is with me. He is near. God is my refuge. He is present. No matter how far we fall. No matter if our world shakes and falls apart. No matter how high and thick the “prison walls” become.
We are not alone. God is with us.
Secondly, He is our hope.
In the film we discover that Red slowly let go of hope during his many years at Shawshank because his hope was only in that which he could see. His worldview had become too narrow with his eyes constantly focusing on the troubles all around him. He put his trust in himself and what he could arrange and “hustle.” Red was just a man trying to survive and “do the time.”
It is far too easy for us to put our hope in people and things as easy ways to either escape or ignore the “prison” of our troubles. If we aren’t careful, we can focus on one false hope after the next without realizing that each one is just adding to the walls all around us.
I have found myself doing this over and over again these past couple of years. All the while forgetting that ultimately people and things will never truly satisfy and will always let me down in one way or another.
God encourages us to lift our eyes and to set them on things “above.” Not focusing on all the everyday troubles around us or wanting us to try to find the “perfect” person to save us, but to look to Him, this “very present” God, as our only real hope.
For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
– Psalm 71:5
He is my hope. I can put all of my trust in Him.
I realize that not everyone who reads this will believe that or even believe there is a God. That’s ok. I didn’t always believe that either. (Sidenote: I would LOVE to hear from you!)
All I know is that Jesus has changed my life. All I can confess is that regardless of how many times I have turned my back on Him, ran away from Him, doubted Him, and put by trust in other things, He has never turned His back on me.
The beauty of the Gospel is that, in Jesus, God gave us a hope that is beyond all hopes.
Through him (Jesus) we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
-Romans 5:2-6; 8
In Him our sufferings (those hurts, worries, pains, doubts, lies, and more that we talked about before) don’t have to become the bricks and bars of our own personal prison.
Instead God works a miracle as He uses those things to build us up. Those “bricks” that would drag us down and lock us away can suddenly be stepping stones to an ever renewing hope… a hope that will never let us down.
When I open my eyes and lift them up and focus on Jesus I am reminded that because “God’s love has been poured into (my) heart through the Holy Spirit” that I truly do have “something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch… Hope.”
THIS kind of hope is a good thing.
“Maybe the best of things.”
Red finally leaves Shawshank Prison after all his hopes are lost. In an act of desperation, he doesn’t try and escape as Andy did but, when he comes before the parole board he tells the truth. And as you may have heard: “The truth shall set you free.”
In my life right now that is something I desperately need.
The truth…
That I am not alone. God is with me.
That all those troubles don’t have to imprison me. Jesus has set me free.
That hope, REAL hope, comes from Him and is a very good thing. Right alongside Faith and Love. And no one and nothing can ever truly separate me from it.
I’m not sure where you are at in all of this, I only know where I am at, but I want to tell you something. All of this is for you too…. this is not just for me, but God offers hope to us all.
Please pray for me even as I pray for you.
Let me hear from you if you have any questions or comments… or even if you just want to talk about the wonders of Morgan Freeman.
I mean, come on, the man has played POTUS, The Speaker of the House, and a Supreme Court Justice! He is ALL the branches of the US government… and he tacked on Nelson Mandela and God for good measure. There is NOTHING he can not do.
Until next time…
B.
Faith Tardis 
I’ve been thinking about hope/hopelessness all day today. Very timely post for me! Loved it.
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