I love this pic. I saw it Thanksgiving Day on Facebook.
You may recognize it from Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror classic, Alien.
You may have also noticed someone digitally added a Thanksgiving turkey and decorations, an addition which I believe makes it one of the best Thanksgiving images ever.
That's right.
But how so?
Well first, you probably remember the scene from which the pic comes:
The crew of the mining ship Nostromo gather together for a meal after Kane, their crew member, awakens from a coma brought on by a crab-like alien attaching itself to his face. It is a short lived celebration, however, as Kane begins to convulse and a razor-toothed alien erupts from his chest, killing him.
It's not long before the alien, this Xenomorph, as it's called, matures and kills all but one of the Nostromo's crew.
Not really the stuff Thanksgiving and holiday images are made of.
What we usually see this time of year are images of fanciful worlds where pain does not exist and the ugliness of our scars is hidden.
Not so with this image. The whimsical addition of the Thanksgiving imagery works.
And it works because it is an image of redemption.
You may recognize it from Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi/horror classic, Alien.
You may have also noticed someone digitally added a Thanksgiving turkey and decorations, an addition which I believe makes it one of the best Thanksgiving images ever.
That's right.
But how so?
Well first, you probably remember the scene from which the pic comes:
The crew of the mining ship Nostromo gather together for a meal after Kane, their crew member, awakens from a coma brought on by a crab-like alien attaching itself to his face. It is a short lived celebration, however, as Kane begins to convulse and a razor-toothed alien erupts from his chest, killing him.
It's not long before the alien, this Xenomorph, as it's called, matures and kills all but one of the Nostromo's crew.
Not really the stuff Thanksgiving and holiday images are made of.
What we usually see this time of year are images of fanciful worlds where pain does not exist and the ugliness of our scars is hidden.
Not so with this image. The whimsical addition of the Thanksgiving imagery works.
And it works because it is an image of redemption.
It is an image of redemption because we know the fate of the crew, yet we see them as friends frozen in a moment of joy and thanksgiving.
We know what happened at their celebratory feast, when the alien first shattered their joy, their fellowship, and their peace.
We know things did not end well.
Yet the added Thanksgiving trimmings give the effect that maybe someone gathered them together, infused them with new life and brought them afresh to the table - the same table that had earlier erupted in chaos.
The same table where the alien had once interrupted their peace... their 'shalom' ...is now the table of their joy.
Reunited, they can give thanks. They can laugh and they can share.
They are now in a state of perpetual feast because their enemy is no more.
They are gathered around a table where the celebration will never again be interrupted by suffering and chaos.
But this is not a hope restricted to the fictional crew of the Nostromo.
In the book of Isaiah 25:6, 8 we read:
We know what happened at their celebratory feast, when the alien first shattered their joy, their fellowship, and their peace.
We know things did not end well.
Yet the added Thanksgiving trimmings give the effect that maybe someone gathered them together, infused them with new life and brought them afresh to the table - the same table that had earlier erupted in chaos.
The same table where the alien had once interrupted their peace... their 'shalom' ...is now the table of their joy.
Reunited, they can give thanks. They can laugh and they can share.
They are now in a state of perpetual feast because their enemy is no more.
They are gathered around a table where the celebration will never again be interrupted by suffering and chaos.
But this is not a hope restricted to the fictional crew of the Nostromo.
In the book of Isaiah 25:6, 8 we read:
...the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined...
He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
As members of the human race we have all experienced the devastation of an alien power.
Known as sin, it has ravaged our hearts and our world with death. Like the Xenomorph in Alien, sin is the perfect killing machine.
Sin and death have interrupted our feasts time and time again.
Joy one moment. Suffering the next.
But God himself has given us hope; hope for a feast, a joy and a peace that will not end.
Hope for a world without sorrow, sickness and death.
A world where all of our tears are wiped away.
He did this by taking on the alien Himself.
In Christ, He took our sorrow, our sickness, our sin and our death onto Himself.
He ended the alien's reign.
But now we wait.
We wait for the reunion. We wait for the feast.
Like the crew of the Nostromo in the above image, we wait to be redeemed together.
And in redemption, we wait for a world without pain, yet not without scars.
Known as sin, it has ravaged our hearts and our world with death. Like the Xenomorph in Alien, sin is the perfect killing machine.
Sin and death have interrupted our feasts time and time again.
Joy one moment. Suffering the next.
But God himself has given us hope; hope for a feast, a joy and a peace that will not end.
Hope for a world without sorrow, sickness and death.
A world where all of our tears are wiped away.
He did this by taking on the alien Himself.
In Christ, He took our sorrow, our sickness, our sin and our death onto Himself.
He ended the alien's reign.
But now we wait.
We wait for the reunion. We wait for the feast.
Like the crew of the Nostromo in the above image, we wait to be redeemed together.
And in redemption, we wait for a world without pain, yet not without scars.
| Pastor Ellery Aguayo | |