GENESIS 4:7
I am now a sophomore in high school, but I can clearly remember my junior-high years, and some of the things I went through then seem so ridiculous now. In junior high I was the odd girl in the crowd; I was the one everyone picked on. I was ridiculed, stepped on, never seen for who I really was; except by my friends. I tried everything to make people accept me for who I really was. I tried to wear the clothes, the shoes, the jewelry, talk the talk; do anything for them to just accept me. I got so tired of them picking on me and not accepting me that I transferred to a private Christian school. When I got there, I finally felt accepted. But in the eighth grade, I started feeling left out all over again. It took a few years for me to realize that some people will never accept me, but God has accepted me all along—from the inside out! God doesn’t care about what’s on the outside; he cares about your heart. It was hard to not be accepted by my classmates, but knowing that God accepted me even before I was born helps me know everything’s going to be okay. It has been several years since my junior-high days, and I have never felt more accepted than I do now.
Hope Minor, 16, Veritas Academy, Texarkana, TX
Some things in my past still hurt me, even years later.
Help me to learn from those past experiences,
Father, instead of just letting them make me sad.