You're Accepted!
There was a woman called Mary Ann Bird who grew up knowing that she was different because she was born with a cleft palate, and when she started school her classmates made fun of how she looked.
She had a misshapen lip, a crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When schoolmates asked 'What happened to your lip?' she would tell them that she had fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. She thought it was more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. She was convinced that no one outside her family could have loved her.
She tells the story of a teacher in her second grade that everyone adored. Her name was Mrs Leonard.
Mrs Leonard was one day giving a hearing test to her class. She went round all the class and finally she came to Mary Ann. She said she knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back - things like 'The sky is blue' or 'Do you have new shoes?' She waited for those words that God must have put into her mouth, those six words that changed her life. Mrs. Leonard said in her whisper 'I wish you were my daughter.'
This is what God says to each of you, despite your imperfections: 'I wish you were my son' or 'I wish you were my daughter.'
One of the great things about Christianity is that it's a message of acceptance.
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