Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.
That's the tagline for one of my favourite movies. The Shawshank Redemption.
I absolutely love the movie's theme of hope, freedom and resurrection displayed through the protagonists Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) and Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman). You can not help but admire Andy's character throughout the entire movie. He really embodies traits such as friendship, patience, survival, hope and ultimately salvation as the movie progresses. It's amazing how the friendship between Andy and Red (Ellis) develops and through it the rediscovery of hope of something more for Red. A hope long forgotten through years of surviving and adapting to his surroundings combined with a fear of losing his identity if he left his prison an enter the real world.
I'm sure we'd all want to aspire to be Andy. I certainly do. The character I relate to the most however is Red. Especially the part in the movie where he finally and openly admits his regret and remorse for his past crimes and is saved and forgiven.
"Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means...I know what you think it means. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?...There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. And not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. .."
Simply put, the driving force between my relationship with God through Christ is that I know God's love personally and without a doubt, it is the wonderful thing that has happened in my life. There's isn't a day that I doubt the decision. Likewise, that relationship also came with the admission that the first 20 years of my life, I won't ever get back. While it wasn't as if I completely wasted my life, it just hammers away at the point that nothing can compare with your relationship with God.
When I understood that, the words that Paul wrote in Philippians 3:7-9 just came alive.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
Essentially its absolute freedom from your fears. Not necessarily freedom obtained instantly like walking through a door, but more like freedom redeemed by figurateively "crawling through 500 yards of s--t smelling foulness I can't even imagine." with hope being your main motivator.
Everyone of us has that prison of fear that holds them back. Their 500 yard sewer pipe. Likewise, everyone of capable of being Andy Dufresne. Andy had absolute hope in what otherwise would have been the seemly impossible. For myself and many other I know, it's God's grace that gives me hope in the impossible. It just a movie, and yet it feels so real.
On a lighter note: BOO! Happy Halloween!
Also: Shawshank should've CLEARLY won the Oscar for best picture 1994. Forrest Gump was good....but c'mon...you and I both know the truth.
I absolutely love the movie's theme of hope, freedom and resurrection displayed through the protagonists Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) and Ellis Redding (Morgan Freeman). You can not help but admire Andy's character throughout the entire movie. He really embodies traits such as friendship, patience, survival, hope and ultimately salvation as the movie progresses. It's amazing how the friendship between Andy and Red (Ellis) develops and through it the rediscovery of hope of something more for Red. A hope long forgotten through years of surviving and adapting to his surroundings combined with a fear of losing his identity if he left his prison an enter the real world.
I'm sure we'd all want to aspire to be Andy. I certainly do. The character I relate to the most however is Red. Especially the part in the movie where he finally and openly admits his regret and remorse for his past crimes and is saved and forgiven.
"Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means...I know what you think it means. To me, it's just a made-up word, a politician's word so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?...There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. And not because I'm in here or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then. A young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him. Tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone. This old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that. .."
Simply put, the driving force between my relationship with God through Christ is that I know God's love personally and without a doubt, it is the wonderful thing that has happened in my life. There's isn't a day that I doubt the decision. Likewise, that relationship also came with the admission that the first 20 years of my life, I won't ever get back. While it wasn't as if I completely wasted my life, it just hammers away at the point that nothing can compare with your relationship with God.
When I understood that, the words that Paul wrote in Philippians 3:7-9 just came alive.
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.
Essentially its absolute freedom from your fears. Not necessarily freedom obtained instantly like walking through a door, but more like freedom redeemed by figurateively "crawling through 500 yards of s--t smelling foulness I can't even imagine." with hope being your main motivator.
Everyone of us has that prison of fear that holds them back. Their 500 yard sewer pipe. Likewise, everyone of capable of being Andy Dufresne. Andy had absolute hope in what otherwise would have been the seemly impossible. For myself and many other I know, it's God's grace that gives me hope in the impossible. It just a movie, and yet it feels so real.
On a lighter note: BOO! Happy Halloween!
Also: Shawshank should've CLEARLY won the Oscar for best picture 1994. Forrest Gump was good....but c'mon...you and I both know the truth.
