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“Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”  Colossians 3:12 NLT

Be kind and rewind! Did you ever see that phrase on an old VHS videotape cassette label? It was a request for a simple act, asking the viewer to show kindness by rewinding the tape at the end of watching a movie so that the next person wouldn’t have to. Simply thinking of the next person was the idea.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the practice of performing “random acts of kindness.” Random Acts of Kindness Day evolved from a Sausalito, California, restaurant in 1982 when Anne Herbert scrawled “practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty” on a placemat. Since then, people have kindly paid the bills of others in line behind them at coffee shops and grocery stores or have simply held doors open, smiled, and said thank you.

We tend to show kindness to those who will reciprocate, people we like, who think like us, and who share our values. We desire evil people to receive judgment, not kindness. The problem is that we can’t show kindness to someone who has done evil to us without forgiving them. Kindness and bitterness can’t hold hands.

We need the kindness of God desperately in this troubled world. Christ-followers, having known the forgiveness and grace of God toward us in our brokenness, need to be the kindest people. Let’s do something kind for another today, but make it purposeful, not random. Let our kindness be senseless in that we choose to show kindness to someone who, perhaps, has wronged us or doesn’t deserve it. This will truly make us different people!

Journeying Together,

John

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