Angel Beats!

So in one of my first blogs I mentioned the fact that i ADORE the anime, 'Angel Beats!' and that I would talk about it in a later post.  I figured I might as well post it here now!  so aside from a few issues with the show, namely some foul language and a lot of questioning God, it's a beautiful piece about getting past the problems with your life.  THERE ARE GOING TO BE SPOILERS ABOUT THE SHOW HERE.
The show starts out with the main Character, Otonashi waking up in a sort of limbo where he is immediately given the opportunity to fight against the "enemy" of the world, a young girl named Angel.  At first he resists fighting, but by the second episode he fights with the "Battlefront," a group dedicated to fighting against God to avoid "obliteration," where they cease to exist in that world.  Throughout the show, he talks to the other members of the group and learns about their previous lives, all of which were filled with pain and sadness.
-- Spoilers --
A great example of this is the leader of the brigade, a girl named Yuri.  She tells her story in the first or second episode of the show.  She grew up with three siblings until burglars broke into her house and forced her to find valuable things with the threat of killing her siblings if she couldn't find anything.  She is forced to watch all three of her siblings die at the hands of ruthless men and then left to wait until the police arrive a few minutes later.  You never find out how she died, but some of the other characters you do.  One of the characters tries drugs after a devastating baseball game and another is killed from a blow from a beer bottle during her father's drunken rage.
To make a long story short, you find out that Otonashi had a sister with cancer and was with her when she died.  He spends the rest of his childhood pursuing a career as a doctor, but gets in a train wreck on the way to the university to get his degree.  An episode or two later, you find out that he saved the life of almost every person on that train after it was involved in a cave-in.  He himself dies just as rescuers find the group - right after he signs an ID that sets him as an organ donor.
I'm leaving a lot of details out in this, of course, but in the end you find out that the reason that the world exists is to give kids who had bad lives when they were alive a second chance to live.  It gives them the opportunity to live happy, fulfilled lives and then pass on.  Three episodes from the finale he finds out who was thought to be the antagonist, Kanade (Angel) is actually the girl who received his heart after the train wreck and that the one thing she wanted in life was to thank him.  The show ends with everybody in the world passing on and living down their old lives.  It's a beautiful story, even with the issues I mentioned earlier, and I'd recommend it to almost anyone.
--
A lot of times we can do the same thing as in the show.  When God gives us a life filled with pain, we blame God for our problems.  I know I have.  It's funny though - in the end God wants us to live happy lives - He wants us to  love him and spend Eternity in heaven, but we fight him  all throughout our lives with disobedience and sin.  We can mistake the pain and problems in our lives as some sort of undeserved punishment when that's not always the case.  We don't think about the fact that what we look at as unfair is God's way of making us the people he wants us to be.  Life isn't always happy and it's definitely not always easy, but God has a plan for life.  John 16:33 says, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."  God knows we will have problems and he is there for us through those problems, we just don't always see it, or even sometimes want to see it.
My last point in this is simply giving back.  There are a lot of people in the world who have issues with their body - Leukemia, cancer, organ failures - literally hundreds of ailments, but there are a lot more people in this world without and we have the opportunity to give back, whether through giving blood or plasma every month or simply being an organ donor.  Kanade and Otonashi's story is a beautiful picture of the effect we can have - a few pen-strokes at the end of Otonashi's life was able to extend Kanade's, even if it was just for a few days.  Not everybody gets that chance, and I don't think it's really possible to understand what a blessing that chance can be.  You never know how God can use what we give to Him, so why not give Him the chance to use us?