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Good morning. It’s 12th June 1944 and Otto Frank has just given his daughter a present - a red and white checked autograph book. The family are in hiding from the Nazis who have occupied the Netherlands and there’s no chance of Anne using it for its original purpose, so she decides to turn it into a diary. That day, her 13th birthday, she writes her first entry.

Over the next 22 months, Anne Frank catalogued the ups and downs of family life in their secret rooms and also the devastating results of the occupation on the Jewish population of Amsterdam. It’s the writing of someone resolutely asserting her personhood even as others were seeking to deny and destroy it. Her life ended at Bergen-Belsen, but her diary is still read and studied the world over - her words live on.

I’m struck by the parallels with another young woman who’s used the power of words to challenge injustice:  Malala Yousafzai. She began by publishing an on-line blog in her native Pakistan campaigning for free access to education for girls.  Aged 15, she was shot by the Taliban as she sat on her school bus. Thankfully she survived, and became the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Anne and Malala are two young women who challenge our assumptions about which voices deserve to be heard and whose analysis should command respect.  Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come only with age.

And that’s celebrated in a psalm which Jesus himself quotes: God has built a bulwark, a defence ‘out of the mouths of babes and infants.’ I think our young people have a lot to say for themselves -  we should listen to them.

Righteous God, open our eyes and ears to those who speak for truth and justice.  Open our hearts that they may lead us from fear to trust and courage to walk in your ways all the days of our life. Amen.