#1 The Fault in our Stars

The words of John Green really resonated with me. I love his humor and the way he writes is almost poetic. Some of the lines in his book were so utterly beautiful that I wanted to stop right then and there in the book and paint the sentence on a canvas and hang it in my room!

I love the personalities that he gives his characters. Many times I grinned at their honesty and exposed vulnerability.

In this novel God is mentioned and briefly talked about throughout the story…Obviously because there are cancer patients involved and death is a natural part of life.

I’m going to point out a few of quotes in the novel, now I could dig way deeper into these quotes or add many others, but these in particular stood out to me.

"That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt."

This is why I love the Lord, he gave us so many feelings to cave into. So many emotions that we can’t necessarily describe… we just feel. God gave us emotions that make us want to soar with happiness, like joy, merriment and all those other fluffy feelings that make you want to skip like a little girl with a Hyppo popsicle.

However, there are other feelings like hurt, anger, pain and suffering. When we are in the pit of these raw emotions and we feel like there is no one to relate to us, we often forget about a man named Jesus.

Jesus lived as a human being just like us, He experienced loss of family and friends. He wept over his friend Lazarus when he heard about his death (JOHN 11:35). Think about the pain he felt while he was on the cross knowing he was leaving his mother Mary.

For instance, in the book Hazel is very concerned about what will happen to her parents once she dies. She is scared of how her death would impact them and their marriage. Jesus felt this same emotion on the cross.

Pain is one of those real emotions that make people question why God created it. I wonder the same thing sometimes. Think about this…with pain and suffering comes empathy, compassion and love. Jesus calls us to love one another (JOHN 13:34). He knows that on earth there’s going to be pain and suffering because we are broken people living in a broken world.

“Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don’t”.

To be honest, when I first read that line it broke my heart. I had to stop reading for a few minutes and meditate on what Hazel had just said.

 I pondered on the word omnipotent. Unlimited power, meaning He can do anything (MATT 19:26). It made me terribly sad that Hazel thought that she did not need or want an all-powerful God.

Now I don’t know how I would feel toward Jesus if I had cancer and did not grow up in a Christian home. I might feel similar to Hazel and have the hope drained out of me like the liquid in her lungs.

But also it got me thinking… I don’t know how I would survive a serious illness

without having my faith burning inside of me

without having His words giving me strength

without having the presence of the Holy Spirit there to comfort me.

All of us have this need… this desire to be fulfilled. A hunger that we want satisfied. An emptiness that we try to fill with earthly things.

But the only person who can quench that thirst and give you this breathe of life that in the book Hazel so earnestly strives to find is Jesus Himself.

“You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you”.

Now I will say Augustus Waters may in fact be every girl’s dream boyfriend. He says the most charming and beautiful things and his sole desire is to rescue people… to be someone’s hero. He has such an innocence and naïve-ness about him that reminds me of us as God’s children.

Now re-read the quote but instead of Augustus’s voice think of Jesus saying this to you

 …(PAUSE)

Does that not blow your polka dot socks off or what?! It did to me!

Both Christians and non-Christians alike push Jesus away. We distance ourselves from Him out of anger, selfishness or self-righteousness. And Jesus being who He is will never stop loving YOU. His affection for you stays constant despite all your efforts to deny Him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

 –Hosea 6:3 (ESV)