There's Hope For TodaySample

Janis Ian’s haunting song touched the hearts and told the stories of many born with imperfect features and perceived handicaps: “I learned the truth at seventeen that love was meant for beauty queens and high school girls with clear-skinned smiles who married young and then retired.”

The song was more than a ballad to teenage angst. It reached people who were well past their teen years, living with a debilitating sense of inadequacy. “To those of us who knew the pain of valentines that never came…” Gayle was driving alone, heard the song, and burst into tears. Gayle was 52-years old.

Teen peer pressure and targeted advertising features rail-thin bodies and sculpted frames. But feelings of “not quite measuring up” pursue us to mid-life and beyond. The need to be valued, loved, and wanted drives the human soul – sometimes to disaster. How tragic to find love and invest trust, only to have it stripped away through divorce or deceit.

There is One whose love is forever true; whose grace is always extended; whose door is always open; and through whose eyes we are beautiful. I too, “learned the truth at seventeen” that ultimate security is ours for the taking in relationship with Christ.