So I just got back from watching "The Shawshank Redemption" at House China. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, it came just short of winning those awards because of "Forrest Gump". Just this past March, the film was rated as the favorite film by BBC Radio listeners which means this movie...is legit haha.
The film starts with a flashback of a banker, Andy Dufresne, sitting in his car plotting the murder of his wife. Andy is on trial for the murder of his wife and her lover. He (nonchalantly) claims that he is innocent for the crime, appealing to a certain unfortunate series of events that "inconveniently" pointed to him as the murderer. The evidence is overwhelming and Andy is sent to the Shawshank State Penitentiary in Maine with a back-to-back life sentence; two life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover. The main plotline of the film is the life that Andy spends inside Shawshank and how he uses the time that he spends in prison. It's a film that focuses on the fruits of hope and what a man (or woman :P) can do with time at his or her disposal.
Why do I love this film so much? And why the heck am I writing about this on our prayer blog? Here's why:
1). Morgan Freeman.
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2). The Message of Hope
I have three questions to ask: How is hope defined in the Bible? Why do we hope? And what do we hope for as believers?
How is hope defined in the Bible?
"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
-Hebrews 11: 1If we do some inductive (savvy) interpreting here, we can see that hope is that of which "we do not see" by a sort of transitive property; hope is the object of our uncertainty. The passage is defining what faith is and by its definition of faith, it depicts some of the characteristics of hope. As mentioned earlier, we hope for things we are uncertain about. If faith is what we are certain for, then hope is what underlies that idea; we hope for things that are uncertain, otherwise, it wouldn't be hope.
Why do we hope?
"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith...If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men."
-1 Corinthians 15:14,19
I think we studied this passage in small groups during the first semester. It basically says, "Look, if Christ was never resurrected, all the things we're teaching you, all the things we sacrifice for, all the things we do, are useless. And because we do those things, we are 'to be pitied more than all men'." Why do we hope? Because Jesus' resurrection has given us a reason to believe in His Word and have a certain faith in His message of salvation.
What do we hope for?
"...But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure."
-1 John 3:2-3
- "But we know..." If we know that He will appear, then by our definition of faith (Hebrews 11:1), we also hope for his appearance. This hope is solidified into faith because His Word guarantees it.
- "Everyone who has this hope in him..." This hope is referring to the phrase before it - "...we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." We hope to be like God. If we are to "see him as he is" and as a result "be like him", then our desire or our hope is to be like God.
- "...this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure." The fruit of the hope to be like in His image. We become pure, just like Jesus is pure.
**Honorable mention:
"But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation - if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel."
-Colossians 1:22-23
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"Forget that...there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside...that they can't touch, that they can't get to...that's yours."
"What is that?"
"Hope"
-Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption
These are the words that Andy spoke to Red after Andy explained how music is something that the walls of Shawshank couldn't take from inside of a person. I love this message of hope. I don't want to give away spoilers, but you can see how hope drives Andy in the movie. Andy's hope in the movie is to not let the prison get to him, to not be "institutionalized" as Red describes it. He settles his mind by helping people, like he did when he was a banker. He does their taxes, he builds up a new prison library, and he sculpts chess pieces out of rocks. Red observes that he did it "just to feel normal".
We as believers here on earth have a hope for something. Something...bigger than the world. Something bigger than us; something bigger than what we know. And we are to set our hearts on it.
"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things."
-Colossians 3:1-2
Our hope is for things above. We are hopeful for eternal life. We are hopeful to be like God. We are hopeful to be of God's image. God commands that we do not dwell on earthly things, but that we set our hearts and our minds on the things beyond what we know of here on earth. Like Andy did, he set his hope on things that he knew that were beyond the walls of Shawshank. Somewhere inside of him, he knew that there was more to rocks and steel bars, even after each decade passed within the walls. And that hope drove him to live life inside behind bars. I think, as believers, we don't live life unless we have our hearts set on something we know is better than what surrounds us. We can't live without dwelling on the things above that God speaks to us about in His Word.
"Better get busy living. Or get busy dying."
-Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption
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3). Discipline
3). Discipline
This is something I struggle reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeealz hard with. Not just spiritual discipline; discipline in general. Discipline of the body, discipline of the mind, discipline of the spirit. I believe discipline is a gift. Even though it is something possible for everyone to have, I believe discipline is a gift to individuals who use it well.
Here's a crazy example of what discipline can do:
Read the description. 35 hours. On a pole. Imagine...imagine the discipline of both his body and mind that he had to have in order to stay up there for 35 hours. Cuh-razy.
I've seen discipline work before my eyes and I've seen the fruit of that discipline. It's something hard to admit after you see the outcome; you simply don't want to face the truth sometimes: hard work pays off.
I have a friend. Tall, built asian kid. Wasn't always that way. Entered high school just tall and skinny. Played for the football team in the fall, ran for the track team in the spring. He did hurdles with me; he was fast, but had pretty crappy form. The football team, as you all know, has offseason workouts for all the football players. This kid worked out everyday. Hard. Pushing himself in the gym, pushing himself in workouts, pushing himself in training. During the track season, he stretched hard (believe it or not, yes, you can stretch hard and you can just "reach"), he would stay after practices and ask for further advice on form, AND THEN hit the weight room (weight room not required during the season, especially during late season. Yeah...sprinters had it good). There wasn't a single year where I didn't hear kids talkin' behind his back like, "Why's he work so hard? It doesn't do him any good...he still sucks at football (don't know if this is true)" and "All he does is work out, doesn't he know it's not doing anything for him?" and "That kid works too hard for nothing." The result of his hard work? He cut his 110m hurdles time by a total of 3 seconds since his freshmen year to senior year. He holds the current 110m hurdles record at our school; he broke it at the end of his junior year and set his own record his senior year. He made states for the first time his junior year, was the regional champion for the 110m hurdles his senior year, and earned ALL-STATE just a week ago. Sorry to break his streak, but because he's visiting Korea for the summer, he can't go to nationals (our hurdles shuttle team took fifth at nationals last year with him as the anchor (the fastest person on the team)). Did I mention that he can do the freaking splits now because he stretched everyday, both at practice AND at home? Yeah. Discipline.
In The Shawshank Redemption, Andy earns the role as the library assistent. He sees how pitiful the library looks and decides to ask the Warden for funds to build a new library. The Warden denies him with zero funds so Andy decides to ask the state government for funds by writing letters. Andy knows he'll get denied by the state, so he sends one every week in order to persuade them. He doesn't get anything until 6 years later: he gets a small check of $200 and some donated books. He wants more than that so he begins sending two letters a week, ignoring the state's request for him to stop sending letters. I forgot the amount of time after the first reply, but Andy eventually got the full amount he needed to fully fund a new library in the prison.
Andy does many other things with the time that he has behind bars. I could go on a long list, but the thing that strikes me (and it may not be for all of you), is that he utilizes his time so well. He knows he has a lifetime sentence (double that actually) so he's OK with how much he'll need to persist; I mean, he's got the time haha. But he persists. He doesn't stop; he isn't discouraged. Time might have felt slower in prison for the convicts; they just had so much of it. What Andy did with that time set him apart from others.
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Application? Spiritual discipline. Bible reading, prayer, fasting, Bible reading, prayer, and prayer. Did I mention prayer? Not sure. Oh yeah, and prayer.
At the end of high school, I had asked myself, "What if, for the past four years of high school, I had actually read the Bible and prayed everyday? What if?" I always thought to myself "Oh hey, it's not a big deal if I miss one day..." which it really isn't...unless I think that way everyday.
We are certainly impatient people. We don't see results, we don't see outcomes, we don't see change right away, so we give up. Not give up right away, but we lose a little hope with every passing day. I think if we realize that there's something more going on besides us doing a laundry list of spiritual disciplines every day, we would be more persistent in what we do. That, ultimately, the fruits of our disciplines shows years later, not right away. This is why we set "our minds on the things above", we know of God's transformative power to shape us and change us over time. We know there is something out there bigger than what we know, something we don't understand.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."
-Isaiah 55:9
I want to trust in God; I want to have my hope in the things that are above. The discipline that is necessary for a believer can only be fueled by that hope; the Gospel Message is what fuels it (Colossians 1:22-23). And not only just do these things, but do them with the right attitude and the right heart. Like I said with my friend stretching hard, just "reaching" isn't enough; you gotta push yourself during your quiet times, your prayers, your fasting, your outreach. You have to go beyond the typical "Thanks for the weather. Help me for X, Y, and Z. Amen." And you gotta do it daily. This is my call for all of us to go beyond everyday, to set our hearts on the beyond everyday, to set ourselves apart from the world, so that we can be like God, purified in His image.
"For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will be with him in glory".
-Colossians 3:3-4
Glory awaits us.
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