Surprising Grace

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation by our God. Sing joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; break into song; sing praise. (Psalm 3b-4) The readings at Christmas are full of joy that seemingly cannot be contained. Our God has done a new thing, they proclaim – Christ has come! Of all the readings, though, my favourite is this more solemn passage of John’s: What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1: 3b-5) A light that the darkness does not overcome: that is the hope that Christmas brings to me. Our violent, divided world – and our wounded, fickle hearts – are, incredibly, the darkness into which God’s everlasting light has come, in the form of a small child. Christmas then is a yearly reminder to us of that incredible truth that God has chosen to become incarnate in the messiness of our lives, and thus given it infinite value. Daniel O’Lear...

This blog entry is a modified version of a speech given by our guest writer Cheah Wui Ling at a WWII talk organised by the Singapore National Heritage Board in March 2017 at the Singapore Art Museum.  Together with my co-researcher, Pei Yi, I have been working on the Singapore War Crimes Trials Outreach Project  for several years now. Yet, the stories that these trials tell continue to shock, amaze, and inspire me. From 1946-1948, the British organised 131 war crimes trials in Singapore. Singapore served as a hub for British war crimes investigations, and trials subsequently held in Singapore dealt with crimes committed throughout the region, as far as the Nicobar and Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. These trials contain many stories of the sufferings experienced by locals and Allies at during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Ordinary men, women and children suffered greatly. However, many were not only victims but survivors and resisters. The trials tell stories...