Why vampires?

So it's embarrassing and all, but I am ready to admit that I am totally hooked on teenage vampire novels...I've read three this week. I made fun of my best friend last year when she made the same confession to me and now I find myself asking her which one to buy next!

I found a quote in one yesterday that I read and re-read and I finally dog-eared the page. Nothing about it is relevant to my life at the moment, but something in it was so compelling, so real, that I found it worth reading again...

"Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me."

I just knew when I read this quote that the person who wrote it had been in pain. Real pain. It made me ponder the validity of reading a vampire novel, or any novel for that matter. Yes, I have always been an avid reader of "fluff books," and have always felt a twinge of guilt because of that. Like I am wasting time on useless stories when I could be reading more important things about church planting and business models. But I found in this quote what everyone who sits down to a good book or movie is looking for.

Relativity.

We all desire to enhance our individuality, but we crave relationship. Relating to others, finding common worth. It is what draws us to any good story. We relate to a character in that story - we identify to their plight. Isn't that exactly what Paul recognized and tried to communicate?

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin."

Jesus is our high priest, but one who has been where we are. He has walked through what we face each day and brings the promise of victory to life. He meets that craving for identification, relativity, and acceptance. He meets the need to be seen and accepted anyway. To be accurately measured and still be found desirable. To be fully known and fully loved. The Story of mankind is laced with this theme and so it can easily be found in less significant tales of entertainment.

So what do I have in common with my vampire characters? Not much. But any story has an element of truth, an element of good and evil. An element of Story.