I'd just like to say thank you to my wife for lending her lovely voice to the role of playing Anne Frank. You really should hear her sing. It's truly something special.For in its innermost depths, youth is lonelier than old age. I read this saying in some book, and I've always remembered it. I found it to be true.Is it true then that grown-ups had a more difficult time here than we do? No, I know it isn't. Older people have formed their opinions about everything and don't waver before they act. It's twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground and maintain our opinions at a time when all ideals have been shattered and destroyed. When people are showing their worst side and do not know whether to believe in truth and right in God.Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn't realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us. Problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually until after a long time we think we've found a solution. But the solution doesn't seem able to resist the facts, which reduce it to nagging again.That's the difficulty in these times. Ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder which will destroy us too. I think the old sufferings are new ones, and yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come out all right. That this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.Yours, Anna.Anne Frank was a remarkable young soul, full of curiosity, questions, and a bright intellect. Yet for all her gifts, she lacked the light of truth. She wandered like so many others, clinging to fragile hopes and misplaced ideals, blind to the unchanging realities of God's word. Her belief in the goodness of humanity, though heartfelt, was tragically naive. The Bible makes it clear: "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).How might her life and her writings have been different if she had been rooted in the truth of Scripture? Had her parents filled her heart with the word of God instead of the fleeting philosophies of man, she might have seen clearly the sinful condition of humanity. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). This truth is not a lament but a starting point. Only when we understand the depth of our sin can we begin to grasp the height of God's grace. It's not despairing to acknowledge our brokenness; it's essential to appreciating redemption.Anne Frank's story isn't just a personal tragedy. It's a reminder of the moral bankruptcy of a world that has turned its back on God. The reality of sin is written all over her experience. She hid in an attic for two years not because the world was good, but because the world was profoundly evil. Her optimism that people were good at heart was a fragile hope that could not stand in the face of atrocities that defy imagination. This is the reality of sin: it destroys, it corrupts, it blinds. The hope Anne sought was not to be found in humanity, but in Christ. He declared, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12).Even those who seem righteous are not exempt from sin's pervasive nature. Bishop William Beveridge confessed this so powerfully in his poem:"I cannot pray, but I sin.I cannot hear or preach a sermon,
