Vampire Face-lift

An article entitled “‘the vampire facelift that puts colour in your cheeks” informs of a new beauty process that is associated with your own blood and is better than Botox or plastic surgery. Women are ironing out their wrinkles and rejuvenating their skin with injections of their own blood. The procedure involves taking blood from a patient’s arm and running it through a machine that separates out the platelets. These platelets, which are tiny cells, have hormones and proteins, and are responsible for making the blood clot following injury. It is thought that at high concentrations, if injected into the face, they will stimulate the skin to repair itself.  It was tested on rats with positive results, although why rats would want a beauty treatment puzzles me!

Patients have three sessions costing £400 each and a whole course is £1,500. It helps skin which has become dry or damaged by the sun or smoking and is thus wrinkled. It has been found that these injections increased the number of collagen fibres in the skin and improved its quality. This treatment had impressive results in America and has now invaded our shores also with good outcomes. A registrar from a Harley Street surgery has stated that 60% of patients are well satisfied with the experiment. One is not sure what happens to the other 40% – perhaps still wrinkled!

It is said that the face we have until we are forty is the result of our parents and thereafter by ourselves – how we live determines how we look. The face often reflects the soul, clearly stated in Proverbs 27:19 “As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart.” In life we are assailed by hurry, worry, flurry, fear and faces. These, in varying degrees, affect us adversely; we crinkle and crease in proportion to our reaction to surrounding influences. However, scientists at Orebro University, Sweden have declared that our eyes are indeed windows to our soul. Their findings showed that those with densely packed crypts are more warm hearted, tender, trusting, and likely to sympathise with others. In comparison, those with more contraction furrows were more neurotic, impulsive and likely to give way to cravings. The researchers argued that eye structure and personality could be linked because the genes responsible for the development of the iris also play a role in shaping part of the frontal lobe of the brain, which influences personality.

Further it is often said that ‘The beauty on the outside never gets into the soul. But the beauty of the soul reflects itself on the face,’ or visa versa. [Archdeacon Fulton Sheen]. We cannot by cell injection become a beautiful person, it is inward and either shines or we are not beautiful, whatever the face tells us – either real or artificial, the eyes reveal how it really is.

Metaphorically the blood of Christ flowing through us by divine injection helps alleviate crinkles and wrinkles; the transmuting beauty from within shines out changing us from glory to glory. The promise is sure, the fact undeniable. It is then that the face and eyes are co-joined in harmony of metamorphous wonder, divinely etched. Our transfusion came through the cross as we knelt in repentance before the riven Christ – it cost us our pride and he his life. His experiment has gone on for over two thousand years and whereas human attempts at anti-ageing fail200, his converts to life eternal, and whilst life remains those wrinkles become signs of honour. He takes the pain of life and makes it into glory.

Once we have had that injection we begin to reflect heaven which is born in our soul. We are not vampires but victorious, triumphing even over age. We do not lose but gain beauty as the years pass and we resemble the living Christ because His blood is ever efficacious to forgive and cleanse – beauty is seen in holiness.  Let the Bible speak: Ps 51:7 “Cleanse me with hyssop, [or take me to your laundry] and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” What is more beautiful than the driven snow?