Bible Reading: John 1:10-14
The Word became human and lived here on earth among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. John 1:14
KATRINA WAS DESTINED to be a model and an actress before she was born. When Katrina was six months old, Joyce, her unmarried mother, moved them to Los Angeles and enrolled her daughter with a modeling agency to do commercials for baby products. The little girl’s childhood was tightly scheduled with modeling classes and competitions, dancing and acting classes, and auditions for commercials and bit parts in television shows. Joyce was determined to keep her daughter on the fast track to Hollywood stardom.
The night Katrina graduated from a posh Los Angeles prep school, she disappeared. She said good-bye to her mother after the ceremony, supposedly on her way to a country club for the senior class all-night celebration. Katrina never came home the next morning. Months later she was found in a shelter for homeless teens in Baltimore, dirty and scarred from street life.
Joyce paid for Katrina to be flown home. “Look at your hair, your skin,” Joyce cried at their reunion. “You have ruined your life.”
“No, Mother,” Katrina shot back angrily. “I have ruined your life. I never had a life, not until I left home. You robbed me of my childhood. I was your daughter only when I was posing or performing.”
Katrina stayed in Los Angeles and got a job waiting tables. At the invitation of a former classmate, she began attending a small church. She had difficulty at first accepting their hospitality. She had the same misgivings about God, thinking he wouldn’t want someone who had done what she had done. Her value as a person had been attached to her appearance and performance for too long.
People like Katrina often feel unworthy when their normal human need for attention goes unmet. We receive attention when people enter our world and show interest in the things that interest us. By forcing Katrina into her own world of modeling and performing, Joyce failed to meet Katrina’s need for attention.
Maybe your inner self-portrait is distorted because you didn’t receive the attention you needed growing up. Nobody took a serious interest in what you were about. The good news is that God loved you enough to enter your world. He came from heaven to earth to identify with your human struggles and die for your sins. He is interested in you, and he always will be.
REFLECT: How have the people around you shown interest in your world? How has God proven his interest in you?
PRAY: God, sometimes I feel like I have to fit into someone else’s mold. Thank you for being interested in me just the way I am.
