A Biblical Look into New Moon: Bella's Birthday

As New Moon opens, Bella is dreaming about Edward. This isn’t a new experience for her. She has been dreaming of Edward since her first interaction with him at Forks High School. If you look at Bella’s dreams throughout the Twilight saga, you will notice that her dreams often predict the moods of the book. Bella's dreams in Twilight were a mixture of light (understanding) and protection (love). The tone changes in the second book.

In this first scene, Bella looks into a wonderful memory of her grandmother, only later to realize it is her own face in the mirror. Bella is fearful of getting old.

“All through the perfect summer – the happiest summer I had ever had, the happiest summer anyone anywhere had ever had, and the rainiest summer in the history of the Olympic Peninsula – this bleak date had lurked in ambush, waiting to spring.

And now that it had hit, it was even worse than I’d feared it would be. I could feel it – I was older. Every day I got older, but this was different, worse, quantifiable. I was eighteen.

And Edward never would be.

When I went to brush my teeth, I was almost surprised that the face in the mirror hadn’t changed. I stared at myself, looking for some sign of impending wrinkles in my ivory skin. The only creases were the ones on my forehead, though, and I knew that if I could manage to relax, they would disappear. I couldn’t. My eyebrows stayed lodged in a worried line over my anxious brown eyes.

It was just a dream, I reminded myself again. Just a dream…but also my worst nightmare.” Excerpt taken from New Moon, p. 6-7

We enter New Moon with a sense of dread. Everything seems too perfect for Bella. She keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she can’t see how it will happen. For Bella, she thinks Edward will finally awake from his supposed stupor and see the normalcy and senseless boredom of loving a human. Bella can’t fathom herself as an equal partner to Edward unless she becomes a vampire. It’s not long before we see her fear turn into reality. Edward leaves her. She is alone.

Fear can drive an entire life. Do you remember the story of Chicken Little? This little chicken was a character who kept saying, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.” His mantra wouldn’t have seemed so awkward except for the fact of the sky being perfectly intact. Chicken Little wasn’t living in fear based on evidence. He was living in fear of what could happen – the worst possibilities in life. While we laugh at Chicken Little now or even reduce this literary character to a cartoon, his story is quite powerful today. What we fear will become our reality, if we let it.

You may have heard the saying, “As a man thinks, so he is.” This phrase is actually taken from Proverbs 23:7 in the King James translation of the Bible. What lies in our hearts drives our actions and ultimately, our reality. King Solomon wrote the book of Proverbs. He is known as the wisest man to have ever lived. What else does he say about the outlook of the heart?

Read the following verses and record the actions of a person’s heart. Note how the outlook impacts these actions.

Proverbs 12:23

Proverbs 12:25

Proverbs 16:23

Proverbs 18:12

Proverbs 27:19