Hello, everyone. How are your children doing these days? I trust they are spending their long summer vacation in meaningful and healthy ways. As I spend more time with children and follow their schedules from place to place, I find myself learning much and widening my own horizons.

For many first‑generation immigrants, children become our first teachers—helping us learn English, understand American life, and experience this society. But recently, not only in immigrant communities but throughout society, children are increasingly the ones who move adults. In this trend, it is worth pausing to ask: Where do adults truly stand? Let us open a window to reflect on this together. First, let us listen to a hymn.

🌱 When Children Resist a Broken System

In Korea today, more students are voluntarily leaving school. These are not poor students or troublemakers—they are top students, model students. Yet they drop out because they dislike an educational system that “steals their dreams.”

They rebel against endless memorization and a school life that feels like a 14‑hour prison camp. Tired of a society that treats college admission as the only path to survival, these children are offering adults a silent protest.

We once used the phrase “entrance‑exam hell.” How tragic that such a phrase ever had to exist. Adults know the system is broken, yet fail to change it. Children are now the ones delivering a sharp rebuke.

🚴 A Father Changed by His Child

There is also the story of Bertrand Boudreau, a 42‑year‑old Canadian man who has been cycling around the world since August 1994 to raise funds for AIDS relief. His journey began with a single comment from his 13‑year‑old daughter:

“Dad, you look like an unhappy man who only cares about money.”

Shaken, he examined his life and realized he had lived only to earn money—like a machine. Later, after witnessing the grief of a woman who had lost her brother to AIDS, he resolved to help.

He closed his business and began his world tour by bicycle, hoping to raise awareness and funds. He plans to finish in August 1998 on the U.S. East Coast. Today, he pedals on as one of the happiest people in the world—all because a child’s clear eyes diagnosed her father’s life and opened a new world for him.

🎈 When Adults Steal Children’s Play

Children’s innocent words and playful actions often awaken us. Yet adults sometimes take away the very play that belongs to childhood.

Instead of letting children run, make mistakes, and explore, we trap them early in Kumon math, gifted programs, music lessons, and endless structured activities. Even in a society rich with learning environments beyond the desk, parents still try to keep children seated at one.

Do we visit schools demanding to know our child’s class ranking? Do we compare siblings—praising one and belittling the other? If so, it is heartbreaking.

Many children struggle with feelings of worthlessness—not because of outside pressure, but because of parental indifference or obsession with grades. Even though they are born here and are full citizens, our children often endure stress as minorities, always treated as outsiders.

🌟 “The Child Is the Father of the Adult”

Poet William Wordsworth wrote, “The child is the father of the man.” Kahlil Gibran also said:

• “You may give children your love, but not your thoughts.”
• “Their bodies may rest in your house, but their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow.”
• “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”

This is true. Parents in our immigrant community give everything to their children, yet despair because they cannot hold their children’s souls. While adults work day and night, children grow up in a world entirely different from their parents’. Living under the same roof, eating from the same pot, yet worlds apart—this often leads to wounds that are hard to heal.

Recently, a tragic story broke our hearts: a mother, trying to stop her teenage daughter from going out at night, clung to the car. The daughter, in anger, drove off—only to realize too late what had happened. The lifelong guilt she must bear is unimaginable. This is not someone else’s story; it could be any of ours.

💛 Happy Children, Unhappy Children

Happy children grow under parents who respect their dignity. Their purity awakens adults like clear crystal.

Unhappy children grow under parents driven by competition, greed, and success. These children chase worldly ambition alone, losing dreams and humanity.

Children are not our possessions—they are God’s gifts, God’s children who will carry the world forward.

This summer, why not focus on character formation through play and faith? Sing hymns with your children. Hold their hands in prayer. Explore their inner world with them. They will grow in beautiful ways.

Proverbs 14:27 says: “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death.”

When we truly fear the Lord, our children will be happier than ever, and their souls will draw near to ours. I pray that this week you will share vision with your children—those who live in the house of tomorrow.

🌳 From the Forest Where a Window Opens

On July 4th, Independence Day, the Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars, bringing the mysterious Martian landscape into our living rooms. The world was filled with excitement and new dreams of space exploration. Behind this achievement were NASA engineers whose tireless effort and belief—“We can do it”—made the impossible possible.

To prepare for every obstacle, they even created a “gremlin” machine to sabotage their own prototypes, forcing engineers to anticipate every failure. They knew that every success is a flower that blooms from the soil of failure.

Our lives are much like Mars exploration—uncertain, full of obstacles. Yet a life that asks in faith, without doubting, “We can do it,” will experience wonders just as great.

✨ When We Say We Can

When we say we can, the thistle‑covered ground becomes fertile soil.

When we say we can, rusted hearts open.

When we say we can, high walls and deep valleys become level ground.

When we say we can, water springs from rock, and a path opens in the wilderness.

When we say we can, we tie the towel as Jesus did and wash our brother’s feet.

When we say we can, joy rises from small things, hope from the insignificant, healing from the wounded, freedom from the bound.

But when we say we cannot, all these things fall into eternal silence.

— Yoon WanHee, July 13, 1997