Letter from the Editor
Kathy Luo
Dear reader,
Welcome to the Spring 2017 issue of Cornerstone! How this
magazine came into your hands is a complete mystery to me.
Maybe you saw a copy lying around in Faunce. Maybe you’re a
friend of someone on staff, and they gave it to you themselves.
Or maybe you’re not holding a magazine at all, but viewing it
online after following a link on Facebook (wow, technology!).
Regardless of how you’re reading this, we’re glad you are. I
know God has a lot to do with it. After all, as Isaiah 59:1a (NIV)
says, “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save”— I
doubt it’s too short to hand you a magazine either!
Thinking of the unexpected, random ways someone might
stumble upon a copy of Cornerstone reminds me of how un-
predictable life is. Maybe it’s because of this unpredictability
that wandering is such a universal human activity. We make up
cool names for it, like “exploring,” “browsing our options,” or
“living with arms wide open.” And sometimes, it really is as fun
as it sounds. I still have vivid memories of walking onto campus
for the first time, ready to stroll through every green and browse
courses like there was no tomorrow. But as I (and anyone who
has ever grappled with the open curriculum) would soon find,
wandering isn’t fun forever— eventually, it becomes exhausting.
And at these times, we need something upon which we can rest.
What is that thing for each of us? That question can be hard
to answer. Every day, dozens of different items call for our at-
tention, forcing us to make calculations on where to put our
energy, how to spend our time, and ultimately, what to deem as
important. I used to plug and chug this equation endlessly. The
answer I got changed depending on the day. But eventually, I
realized that it just didn’t work: Whether I put my value into my
grades, clubs, friends, or even myself, the things I painstakingly
determined to be the most solid in my life always turned out to
be fallible. And every time something went wrong, I would lose
direction, left to wander again.
Does that mean that these things are bad? No, of course not!
But as God is showing me more and more every day, placing
our joy, faith, or worth in them is a dangerous game. The sec-
ond we mistake any God-given gift as more reliable, comforting,
or perfect than God Himself, we miss the point: that ultimately,
“every good and perfect gift is from above” (Jas 1:17, NIV). It
is through this truth that we can finally take a break from our
wandering and find a definite, fulfilling peace.
6 Spring 2017
I wanted to touch upon that because I feel like it’s on a lot of
our minds. Indeed, though there was no formal theme for this
issue, many of our submissions returned again and again to this
theme of feeling lost. I pray that if you’re in that place, that
one of these pieces may resonate with you. We’ve also covered
a plethora of other topics, from evangelism, to the Wild West,
to finding bits of heaven in thermodynamics. When it all comes
together, I think it shows that God really is everywhere, so long
as we’re looking.
So as I leave you with the rest of the magazine, feel free to
wander! The good thing about it is that God is present on that
course, too. He is surely waiting around every corner— even
when you close the cover.
Wandering, but not lost,
Kathy Luo, Editor-in-Chief
Kathy Luo is a sophomore concentrating
in English and Sociology.