For the last few years, I have heard and read about grown up children who do not want to leave home because life is too much a struggle out there in the world. On the other hand the rich parents have money to buy their children whatever they want and much prefer that they stay around doing nothing.


Lately, I have given a lot of thought on how characters are made. Now that I have lived long enough, to be able to look back, to base my assumption on experience and no longer on what the books say, I am in final agreement that good character requires the refining of the 'furnance of life'.



I further examine the idea of a young plant which was once nurtured to life in a warm house and was transplanted outdoor later to grow into a big tree, I can only say, the warm house period is like the gestation period of a human life, no sooner when the young plant is a few inches tall, they are put out to survive in the elements of nature. It may survive or it may die, depending on what it has to take - flood, drought, heat or cold, year after year.



There are a lot of human beings who have to go through similar experience like a plant in the nature, life may norished them, toughen them, warpped them, contorted them, strengthen them or killed them. Except for those which live in a warm house enviornment for too long, like a quarter of their lives, without undue exposure to hardship, a tree that old will most likely not be able to withstand transplanting sucessfully and a human being, unprepared for life.

Human beings always think we have a better way of doing life, planning for the outcome. It is none the less, far from the truth because we have not live our whole life to accumulate enough knowledge and wisdom, nor able to discern what is to come to navigate the course of life. So whose fault is it for a generation which never grow up. I don't think it is the children's, since they are the one under the influence.

The Bible is a compact record of a few thousand years of human history, not about the frivolous things nor the accomplishment of human beings which are followed by controversal results, but about character and relationship with our creator God.

Someone says, the first pioneers in North America was very close to the ideal life. Imagine they had to cut down numerous giantic trees to clear land for home stead, garden, and farmland.
Not one family could do it on their own. So neighbors had to help each other out. If they were
new to the land, they had to survive the bitter winter with very little, not to eat away their precious seeds to be planted in spring. Women had to bear children year after year. Many of the children wouldn't even survive infanthood. People worked before sun up to sun down. Mothers would be making and mending clothes by the oil lamp. Yet all these taught them to be thankful for what ever little they had, recognizing many things are not in their control and life is fleeting .They could only casted their hope on God for a better future (in heaven). That is all life is about and it was not hard to come to the conclusion. But it is the opposite for people nowadays, being cushioned by materials and technology, men lost the vision and the real meaning of life.

Instead, we just scramble to get as much as we can as earthlings. Stephen Kings said....."we are as broke as the day we were born on the day we die." The Bible says, "we gather much money but not knowing really who will get them after we die" (for riches and wealth can change hands so quickly.) What the simple can learn in daily struggle, Others have to learn it in castastrophies.