by Ron Estrada
I’ve read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and seen the movie. Yes, I’m a bit of a YA geek, but who says 47 isn’t young?
In both the book and the movie, a despicable drunk of a man utters what is the theme of the story, later embellished by our heroine: Between two numbers, there are infinite other numbers. Between 1 and 2, for example, there is 1.1, 1.01, 1.0001, and so on. We’re all given infinite points of time in our lives. Some infinities are just smaller than others.
While that bit of philosophy was meant to offer comfort to a teenager dying of cancer, it serves as a reminder to all of us that God has given us each an infinite number of points in our lives. Some infinities are smaller than others, but how we use them is how our lives will be defined.
In The Fault in Our Stars, the two main characters, Hazel and Gus, visit the house of Anne Frank. This is not a convenience of story-telling. Green is too good an author for that. The symbolism is clear. They visit Anne’s house shortly after hearing the “infinities” line from Hazel’s author hero.
Anne Frank was given a much shorter infinity than most of us, but the way she used what she was given has been touching lives ever since.
My post today is a simple one. A short infinity if you will. You don’t have to be a teenager dying of cancer or a young girl murdered during a holocaust. You may be a 30-year-old mom or a 90-year-old great-grandfather. The infinite points remaining in your lifetime may be shorter than others or longer, but you still have those infinite points.
How will you use them? What if I told you that God would evaluate your life based on the next five minutes? After all, there are an infinite number of points in those five minutes. Surely we can use them wisely and in a way that will impact another life.
Give it some thought. And don’t squander those little infinities.
Having just finished this book, I appreciate your perceptive take from it. Thanks!