BY JOHN MONTAGUE John Lennon asked us to “imagine there’s no heaven.” In his famous anthem, he envisaged a world that had abandoned religion, nationalism, and capitalism: “Imagine all the people / Living for today … Living life in peace … Sharing all the world.” The picture he painted with his lyrics, piano keys, and crooning voice has proven so attractive that Rolling Stone recently … Continue reading The Christian Imagination

BY TIFFANY TSAO

Whenever I return home to Singapore for Christmas, I can always expect a miracle. Or rather, I can always expect to hear about one from my family. Past miracles related to me have involved the inexplicable healing of serious and terminal illnesses, angelic visitations, exorcisms of demons, and the like. My aunt once showed me photos taken during her trip to Israel with luminous white spots here and there. “Angels,” she told me. “Are you sure?” I asked. “What else could they be?” she replied, somewhat defensively. “Something wrong with the camera?” “Like what?” “I dunno,” I mumbled; not knowing very much about cameras, I decided to let the matter drop. Another time, my mother told me of a woman in her office who found out she had cancer. After an extended session of prayer, the doctors found no trace of the malignant tumors which they had previously found throughout her body. “Praise God. Isn’t He amazing?” my mother asked, rhetorically of course. If the story was true, I was inclined to agree with her, finding this incident a far more convincing instance of divine intervention than white spots in a photograph. Continue reading “Expecting Miracles”

BY EZRA JUSTIN LEE

Dad tells me it’s just what I need. And I am not in the right mind to make my own decisions. I fell hard in love, or the closest thing I’ve felt to it, for a Juliet when my name wasn’t even Romeo. And knowing this, I still tried to change the title of a story that had had futility written all over it—even from the beginning of my pursuit.

I have just professed my love to a girl who laughs at me when I say, “I like you,” and explains away why I actually don’t when I tell her again that I do. In response to this trauma of failure and break of heart, I decide to anesthetize the pain with an adventure. Adventure is the perfect drug for these cases. Fun, affordable at times, mind- and time-consuming, and—for the most part—it can be legal. Dad’s right. Adventure it is. The perfect medicine. Continue reading “Serendipity on the Metro”

BY BRITTANY TYLER Why me? If there is one single question that all Jews have asked since Father Abraham, it could be no other. Jews have always been kicked out, singled out, persecuted, excluded, resented and unwanted, ridiculed, fooled, denied, and forced to hide–and all for no other reason than being “God’s chosen people.” Yet for what purpose did God choose them? To suffer? Until … Continue reading The Last Exile

BY SARAH CHO Every Wednesday, Peter Kim, pastor of Korean-American Campus Mission at Berkeley, takes the Megabus up from southern California for the weekly worship service. Then he spends half of Thursday with the fellowship’s students before taking the Megabus back down. And while most of his students enjoyed winter break warming their beds and mindlessly clicking remote controls, he traveled across the planet to … Continue reading Following Footsteps

BY WILL URICH

“In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That’s the kind of person that’s worth sticking with.”
—J.K. Simmons, Juno

It’s funny how we, all of us, put off the truth we know in our hearts. We are attached to this world, to our insecurities. I know I am. Continue reading “The Vision of Love”

BY LUE-YEE TSANG Many people call God the first priority in their lives. Or perhaps they pray, “Lord, help us to make you our first priority.” Sounds right. After all, does Jesus not say, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33, emphasis mine)? Hold your horses. Read that verse again. This time … Continue reading First Priority?

BY JESSICA PARK

My good friend went to Dharamsala this past December, and she brought back pictures of a few breathtaking things. One of these was a Buddhist prayer flag. The dirty, simple white cloth was weighed down with miniscule text in perfect rows, blocked into stanzas, and every time the wind blew through the black and white, this prayer for enlightenment was sounded again. I could not help but marvel at the ingenuity of the banner as a means of perpetual prayer. Continue reading “Prayer as Wrestling with Faith”

BY RICHARD BERBERIAN

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matt. 5:11)

If you’re like me, your ears perk up whenever you hear Christians discussed in the media. Perhaps you’ve seen Jesus Camp or Joel Osteen being interviewed on television. Frequently, this coverage is negative. Or maybe you’ve heard more than a few disparaging comments about Christians from your professors. Should we care? Should Christians be concerned about what those outside the church think of them? Should our reputation with the world matter? I will argue that, while in some sense we shouldn’t be concerned with finding approval in the eyes of cultural opinion-makers, the Bible does instruct us to care about our reputation. Continue reading “Christian Reputation”

BY BESORAH WON

Homer once sang that “words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.” Simply put, empty words reflect their lack of value in the speaker’s heart. If these words hold no value to the speaker, then they will have no value for the listener. Homer’s wise words, however, should hold significance for his audience—especially the Christian listener. Continue reading “On Christian Jargon”