Title: Send Workers to the Harvest
It has been a year of many hardships, such as the IMF and severe floods, and those who do not believe may think, “There is nothing to be grateful for. In the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk said that the attitude of a believer is to be able to praise and give thanks to God in the midst of trials and tribulations that are difficult to bear. He said that giving thanks in situations in which we cannot be thankful is true gratitude and a blessed faith. In this time of Thanksgiving, we need to realize and understand the will and revelation that God is trying to reveal to us through the present trials and tribulations. As we read the words of this text, we can not help but feel and be moved once again by the mystery of Jesus' words that transcend time and space, as the words of Jesus, who looked at the rural situation in Israel 2,000 years ago, accurately understand our rural reality today. However, it is clear from the preceding verses 35-36 that these words are not just for breaking through the rural realities of Israel, but rather are the words of a parable with a deeper meaning.
Verse 35, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness.” Verse 36, “When he saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them, for they were troubled and lost, like sheep without a shepherd.”
The people who lost their jobs after being retired and fired, the people wandering the streets, the people of the north and the south of the Korean Peninsula who are starving and afflicted by drought and floods, there are few workers to take care of and comfort them. you feel that you are there.
Since January of this year, I have been farming in the mountains of Muju-gun, Jeollabuk-do, and establishing Blue Dream High School to promote alternative education. I don't have a teacher's license or experience as a teacher, but after serving as a teacher for many years in the field of education, I am deeply moved by the determination, dedication, and zeal of young teachers who want to establish an alternative school for true education, realizing that our education cannot be like this. I couldn't stand it, so I joined it. For the past 30 years or so, I have been circling around social missions like a yoke-bound cow, led by an invisible force (I confess that it is the power of the Holy Spirit). We are accepting it as a new calling. Although it was a short period of almost 9 months with the teachers who wanted to practice the new education, I came to know more about our educational reality and how our education should be.
Nearly 100,000 children leave their homes every year and leave school. I see most of our children wanting to run out of school, but they lack the courage and are forced to adapt. According to a news report, 46-7% of high school students in our country are tempted to commit suicide due to school and family problems, and 17% of them actually buy drugs or commit suicide. We criticize children who leave their homes and leave school and cause social scandal as problem children and school gangsters without even thinking about why they have no choice but to do so.
Ephesians 6:4 says, "Parents, do not injure their children, but educate, discipline, and bring them up in the spirit of the Lord." What and who is pushing our children away from home and school? Isn't that the wrong reality of education, a family without love, and our parents who have an incorrect view of education? We need to reflect on ourselves whether parents are hurting our children's hearts and whether they are truly educating in the spirit of the Lord. And if there are innocent people before God, they can criticize our children as problem children and school gangsters.
Emil Russo said, "The purpose of education is not to make machines, but to make people." Ladies and gentlemen, is our education today the education that makes us truly human? Isn't our education mass-producing a machine that wins the war for college entrance exams, a machine for success, a machine for surviving the game of strength and weakness, a machine called selfishness? There is a western saying, "Education without love is rebellion against God and man." Does the principle of love really exist in our education? I believe that the essence of the IMF crisis is in many ways due to the wrong educational climate. I think that the educational climate that demands these things, higher than others, more than others, and faster than others, is the cause of the insolvent economy and the insolvent society.
In a reality where only a few students who score well are respected and the majority of children are marginalized and neglected, our school aims to provide education for the majority of marginalized children who do not have the ability to score. We want to educate them so that they can develop the precious talents God has given them, hidden and dead. They will also educate them to help them live their lives as successes in life with pride and nurturing their talents as noble.
Let me conclude. The crops to be harvested are food for tomorrow. Our children are the grains that will bear the tomorrow of our society. We need workers now to raise and nurture grains of sound and healthy character so that the grains do not become dead and rot. These days, I pray that Christianity in Korea will come back as a worker for the education of our children, inheriting the precious tradition of our ancestors of faith who lived in the period of enlightenment, so that they can again become respected spiritual supporters in a position that is now being criticized by the board of directors. do.
Dear brothers and sisters of Saegil Church, let's unite our hearts and pray earnestly so that this can happen.