Please Be Kind, Rewind
When I was a kid we had Blockbusters.
I know this may come as a shock to some Gen Zs, maybe even to some thirty somethings - but in middle school me and my friends would get dropped off at a Blockbuster, while my mom waited in the car. We perused the THOUSANDS of movies they had at the store. We giggled about boys. To begin with they only had VHS tapes - later carrying DVDs. And… life got REAL was when the blessed Blue Ray hit the shelves.
But I digress.
In middle school, for sleep overs and friends nights we would pick out our movie and maybe a few snacks (PG-13 only mom said). We went home and watched them all in our sleeping bags, awaking the next day hazy and covered in popcorn. To this day, I own dozens of VHS movies. Something is wrong with me… but I can’t get rid of them. I remembered saving money to buy Romeo & Juliet (when I wanted to marry Leonardo DiCaprio) and Nothin to Lose. These were my movies.
Blockbuster had a saying on the side of their box that simply read “Please Be Kind, Rewind.”
What they MEANT (for you teens reading - if you even READ blogs anymore I’m not sure) - (TEENS DO YOU EVEN READ?!?! I kid, LOL I kid!) was that when you were done with the movie, it was a general kindness to rewind the movie to the very beginning. If you had a REALLY old VHS player you actually had to hold the button THE WHOLE TIME while that She’s All That VHS rewound to the beginning.
Please be kind. Rewind.
2020 has been so brutal for so many of us. We started off the year with so many hopes of who we would become, where we would go, the goals we would reach. But, 2020 was a field of lost dreams, a valley of lost momentum. We felt confused, hurt, frustrated, angry, betrayed. We took to the news to understand our plight. We stayed home and watched too much TV. Something about Tigers and Carol Baskins is how we will remember 2020. The world heaved in upheaval. We felt helpless and scared. We tried to make the best of it. We cried.
And then… we judged.
Out of all the things I am least proud of, and most aware of in this season - is the uniform and unadulterated judgement that is seeping out of us all now. Maybe its because we’ve lost so much. Maybe it’s because pressure shows us who we really are. But somewhere in between those weeks in March and where we are now, in December of 2020 - we found ourselves full of self-righteousness, and lacking in actual righteousness.
We have become experts in digital criticism.
We have become brilliant in our current-event awareness.
Even when we feign compassion it is at the baseline judging others for not being enough, being like us, being different, being more.
We are asking the world to be what we are not ourselves.
And its embarrassing, isn’t it? And humbling.
That we want the world to be better but we are not better.
That we want society to be more effective, but we have stopped trying.
That we want everyone to change, but certainly we won’t go first.
Jesus talked about this, I am sure.
In Matthew 7 Jesus tells a story about a man with dust in his eyes. In this story, there is a secondary character who is harsh, judgmental, and crabby about this dust. True to form, and true to 2020, this secondary character is INCREDIBLE at pointing out what is wrong in others, but quite inept at discovering what is wrong in himself.
The first character has dust in his eye.
His accuser has a 2X4.
What Jesus is MOST upset about in our lives isn’t when we judge. It’s when we judge without looking at home base FIRST. Effectually, Jesus said you COULD judge others based on their fruit (the outcome of their lives- Matthew 7:16) - but FIRST, you need to look at yourself.
In 2020 it has never been more obvious to us who we are - we are, after all, with ourselves for days on end. But in 2020 it has never been more tempting to judge others first, assess ourselves never.
When Jesus angrily clashed with the Pharisees it wasn’t that he wanted to condemn or bring judgement - but he wanted to REMIND them of WHERE THEY HAD ONCE BEEN, and REMIND them that FOR BUT THE GRACE OF GOD - they would still be there.
Which brings me back to Blockbuster.
And the need to rewind our lives more often.
When we rewind the tape on our OWN lives, we are more prone to offer grace to others. We need to rewind our lives, our choices, our faults and our issues. When we REWIND our hearts and our angry words and our jealous motives and our self-righteous ways we see that maybe we need more grace from Jesus, and as he offers mercy we can more readily give it away.
We need mercy. It’s easier to give it when we humbly receive it again.
Kindness is rewinding. Kindness comes from being REMINDED. Of who we are. Of how far down we were when Jesus found us. And of how far he’s brought us.
And in his kindness, we move forward still.
As we end 2020, may we be kind, and rewind.