Long Time No See!

It's been a few years since I've updated this thing, but I've been into this whole typing-out-my-thoughts thing, and thought that publishing things would be a good way to get my thoughts out there. So I'm going with it.

Things have severely changed with me since my last post which was...2009?? Yeah, I've since graduated from college with a degree in Spanish Language and Culture, and am now working for a mortgage company, bordering on almost a year now.
One of the residual effects of not being in college anymore is that there aren't quite as many people that I interact with in a given day to share my thoughts with, and really talk things out. And with the beautiful fact that I don't have to spend my Saturdays working anymore, I now have a heady amount of free time. I think I want to use this free time productively.

For today, I watched a few movies.
The last one I watched is the movie Daybreakers, which is about a world of vampires and a blood doctor that finds the "cure" for vampirism, to return to humanity.

This movie was really interesting. One of the most popular stereotypes of vampires is that they burst into flames when their skin comes into contact with sunlight. So the very contemporary world of vampires live like normal human beings, except nocturnally, to avoid the sunlight. It's funny that I read this morning the scripture in 1 Thessalonians 5 that says, "You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet."

I feel like it translates very well to this movie. Vampires aren't really alive--they have no heartbeat. So they are children of the night, if you will, forced to live when the sun is NOT out. But it's not really living if the entire definition of your existence is death, is it? The main character of this movie, Edward Dalton, knew that. He was a Hematologist--a blood doctor--who was looking for a way to synthesize blood, so that vampires wouldn't eliminate the human race trying to continue existing.
I guess being a Hematologist would give life a more sober perspective, knowing and researching the very thing that makes life possible--for the living as well as the dead. It made Edward more sober. He understood better than anyone the vampiric need for blood, and how bad it really was, since they were destroying humans to survive. As a result, he shied away from blood more than anyone. He was one of the manufacturing company's greatest assets, so he had access to more pure blood than the average citizen, and yet when offered blood-saturated coffee, he chose to abstain. When his brother, who was part of the "vampire army," came home with a bottle of some high-quality human blood that his position allowed him to obtain, Edward's first and only reaction was to pour it down the drain. He hated that he was hurting others to survive, that he had to depend on something so gruesome just so he could comfortably see another day.
He saw the need for blood, and even when the temptation was there, he backed off from it. A human literally sliced her hand open and poured some of her blood into a cup so he could quench some level of his thirst and remain focused when he first met a large group of humans--whose natural tendency was to stay as far away from a vampire as possible; Edward all but begged the human to save her blood, that he didn't want it.

Who really fights like that anymore? I know I need to. "I beat my body and make it my slave," Paul said. My sinful nature will want some things that are not supposed to be obtained, so I need to fight it and make my body do what I want it to do, not what it desires to do.

When it came time for the change--when Edward discovered the cure, to become human again, there was much at stake. The cure was found in the middle of pain. Exposing oneself to sunlight to jump start the heart and LIVE again was the answer.
When gold is purified, it has to be put through fire so that all of the impurities and imperfections can rise to the top and be scraped off. Just so you know.

Being a true Christian--a disciple of Christ--is hard work. It almost sounds like a cliche by now because everyone "knows" it. But really, seriously, it's not easy. It hasn't been easy for me. But I know that there's more to life than just enjoying it and avoiding the fires of growth and maturity. There's heaven. And if I need to go through suffering and torture and tears and frustration in order to learn how to love God and trust in God and live for God so that God can know me and I can know him and he won't say to me, "I never knew you! Away from me, you evildoers," but rather, "well done, good and faithful servant," then so be it. God is worth any and every bit of trouble I have to go through if it means I get to be with him. So I can take a lesson from Dr. Edward Dalton and his resistant attitude toward a condition that he couldn't help and had to deal with, but didn't know how he was going to get out of. I don't know if I will ever have "relief," but I know there's more. So I'll fight. And let my God fight for me.