Frozen on film

A staple of American holiday gatherings is the home movie. For Christmas my father-in-law received in the mail an old 8 mm home movie his son-in-law had transferred onto a DVD. There was no sound but we hunkered down and watched with fascination the scratches and flickers and shaky handheld engineering, having fun looking for old Studebakers and ladies’ floral-patterned swing skirts.

There is a scene where my husband’s mother, now deceased, gets out of the car and walks up the sidewalk to a house in the suburbs, great with child, wearing a long winter coat. At one point she turns to the camera and there is a close-up of her smiling right into it. I asked my husband to replay the scene a few times because she was so stunningly beautiful and the moment was so fleeting.

Replaying old videos has an unexpected effect on me, it turns out. No matter how many times we replay it, Shirley emerges from the car exactly the same way, walking up the sidewalk and turning to the camera and flashing the same smile, too fleetingly. And with not the slightest deviation, David’s father extends his hand to his brother’s new puppy and pets it while looking up to say a word to his nephew.

Right after this scene, past where the 8 mm movie camera stopped filming, everyone in the film goes on to live his or her life—the lives and outcomes that are now written in indelible characters for all eternity. There is no going back, no more than Esau could reverse what he had done, though he pleaded with tears (Hebrews 12:17). As Scripture solemnly says:

“Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy” (Revelation 22:11).

The tragic sins, the good deeds and bad, all are noted in the books that will one day be opened:

“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done” (Revelation 20:12).

Sometimes you want desperately to climb into the movie and make changes: Warn this one to not take his wife for granted, tell that one that doing things his way rather than God’s will not pay off.

The past is frozen, but the present belongs to the living. And God is the God of the living (Matthew 22:32). The invitation to you and me still stands for 2016:

“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” (Hebrews 3:15).