I absolutely love Pixiv – I spend more time on that site than probably any other. It feeds my obsession for fanart of my favorite series, as well as the content of my Tumblr blog.
For those of us that frequent this artist community, we know that trends come and go, hitting Pixiv like waves. Some are small, arriving for brief amounts of time and making only small splashes. Others, like art for Kagerou Project, are tsunami-sized, and remain impactful for a long time. Somewhere in-between those extremes was Mekakucity Actors, which indeed surged forth intensely and for many months, but which has since rescinded. You couldn’t scroll through the homepage without seeing some sort of image associated with the franchise, but nowadays, you might only see a good piece of Mekakucity art once or twice a week.
Everyone’s seem to forgotten about Ayano Tateyama, Shintaro Kisaragi, and the rest of Mekakushi Dan.
They forgot, that is, until November 22nd – Ayano’s birthday.
Like an unexpected rain, tons of fanart tributes to our heroine came pouring in. This is no surprise for Pixiv, as birthday posts for characters are pretty common, but even then, this tide was especially strong.
On her birthday, everyone remembered Ayano Tateyama. As if they were all Mekakushi Dan members reconnecting with their founder, the artists of Pixiv returned to drawing a beloved character, creating tributes to someone special to them.
If you and I are not careful, though, we might do the same, and to one much more important than a fictional character.
Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
– Revelation 2:4
The message to the church in Ephesus in Revelation is that they’ve forgotten Christ. In the busyness of school, family, and work, we might do the same. Oh, we go to church on Sundays, but our hearts are not devoted to the Christ – we live for ourselves, thinking of Jesus only once and a great while. Perhaps we forget him almost entirely, except for as with Ayano, when it nears his birthday.
As we get closer to Christmas, it’s perhaps a perfect time to ponder on this, to think about how much Christ means to us and whether we remember what he did for us on that cross, and whether we live a life in response to it (or a life that’s centered on ourselves).
This Christmas, I hope you’ll return to your first love. Christ isn’t just the reason for the season – he’s the reason for everything. And he deserves infinitely more than to be forgotten in the daily grind and remembered only from time to time. His life and death demand so much more:
On that cross of calvary
Every burden has been defeated
Every wretched heart redeemed
You drown our sins in seas of crimson
I hope you won’t forget.
—
featured image by Coaurora | reprinted w/permission
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