Perhaps your sexual purity is like a ship that sailed away long ago. But when we turn to God, there is always hope for a new beginning.

Author Ronald Rolheiser describes hearing a sophisticated and sexually experienced young woman who felt deeply unhappy about her life. "There was not a childlike bone in her body," he writes. "She had lost most of her virginity." After hearing the woman's confession, as a pastor he offered her this prescription—"revirginization." Rolheiser explained that forests can be destroyed by pollution or by fire, as was the case some years ago at Yellowstone National Park. Sometimes only black soot remains where once there had been a forest. However, as was true at Yellowstone, given enough time—the rains will come, the sun will shine, and slowly vegetation emerges, the flowers come back, the trees begin to grow, the beauty returns and in a manner of speaking the forest revirginizes. By the grace of God, he can also revirginize us. We can re-experience our purity again.