Twlight and Jesus

Boy meets girl. Awkward conversation. He likes me, he does not like me. We flirt. The fabulous first kiss. Love blossoms. Simple enough, right? However, this is not just another boy…the boy, Edward, is a 108-year-old vampire (frozen at the age of 17) who finds himself madly attracted to his newly arrived 17-year-old classmate, Bella. He wants her, if he ever slept, he would dream about her… It is the “typical” high school love right. She is the quiet girl, he is the bad boy… This forbidden love requires Edward and Bella’s willingness to embrace a complicated future; if there’s to be any hope of surviving they must both sacrifice something. For example, Edward cannot not give in to his desire to drink Bella’s blood; he must turn from everything that he knows. He must make a sacrifice. And Bella must be willing to relinquish her human soul to become a vampire; she too must give up everything she is familiar with, her family, her friends, her “normal” life.

Bella wants to give herself to Edward, no matter the costs, while it’s Edward who puts the brakes on her choices because they’ll hurt her. What 17 year old boy would or even could resist her, she is fabulously gorgeous, her lips are to die for and her body is something most men dream about it. However, this is where is 108 years of experience comes in, and he resists the temptation. He wants to do the right thing by her, regardless the cost to him. And in the end, that’s what real love is truly all about. Sacrificial giving that goes beyond our own interest and looks out for the interests of others.

The Apostle Paul has some insights for us about generously giving of ourselves to others, regardless of whether there are romantic feelings involved or not.

In Philippians 2: 3-8 he tells us:

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross (The Message).

Now that’s sacrificial love. Setting aside the glories of heaven, Jesus bore the worst the world has to offer and extended to us totally undeserved grace and mercy through His death on the cross. He too sacrificed everything he had because of love. Not only did he, our Sweet Jesus sacrifice everything he had, but his father did as well. His father, THE creator of the Heavens and the Earth, the One and Only God, gave up his one and only son so that we might spend eternity with him and that is something that leaves me breathless.

Needless to say, the movie was fabulous. The story line was something that had me curled up on the couch like a teenage girl watching her dream “love story” unfold before her very eyes. Why did I wait so long to watch this fabulous film?