Please be kind...rewind.
joeacast
"Please be kind…Rewind." If you recognize that saying, then you’ve rented a VHS tape from Blockbuster, Hollywood or some other video rental store. Wouldn’t you have loved to see a Redbox dispenser back in the day? The thing would have been the size of a small RV and would have had 3 people inside dispensing tapes!
And back then, when you rented your VHS movie and took it home, inside many of the cases was that little sticker that read: Please be kind…rewind. Why? Because there weren’t many things worse than opening up a tape after you got it home, and having to rewind the stupid thing before you could watch it! In our house, that was especially torturous, because we didn’t have one of those fancy rewind devices that a lot of our friends had. We actually had to put in the VCR and wait an excruciatingly long period of time for the rewind to be complete. *
In reality, rewinding wasn’t really that big of an inconvenience. It took some time, but it didn’t involve any expense or extra equipment. If you had a VCR (which seems obvious since you just rented a VHS!), you had enough tools to rewind the movie. It was really just a matter of being kind for the next user.
I wonder how many acts of kindness you and I could perform each day, if we just thought about the next person. Would we clean up our work space better? Would we wipe up that little coffee spill? Would you abuse the hotel room or rental car like “it’s not yours” if you were thinking about who was next? (Yes honey…I’ll put the seat down!) Paul said it this way: "Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else" (1 Thessalonians 5:15).
Today, think about the next person in line. How could you show kindness and give a blessing to a family member, close friend or a total stranger? Here are four simple ideas:
- Pay for the coffee or fast-food order of the person behind you.
- Leave your workspace cleaner than when you inherited it.
- Wash those dirty dishes in the sink before going to bed.
- Stack all your plates at the restaurant after your meal.
What are some other ways you could think of the one after you? How could you “Be kind…rewind” and make some one else’s day? Give us some more ideas in the comments!
Go ahead and take the plunge, life is always better on the water!
* For those of you too young to know what I’m talking about, check out this video:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/LWxbqaUC_hA]