conversation is an engine

Hope is a worm working its way into your week

It spreads like a yawn. Involuntary. It taints the way you see everything. Like being in love. Hope is a realization working backward from the future to infect this very moment and infuse it with

Better.

I’ve been reading Jürgen Moltmann’s The Coming of God. Moltmann is an Austrian theologian who writes about eschatology (a look at last things, or end of times). Don’t be put off by the churchy/theological word: Moltmann’s take is not the “let’s read the Book of Revelation as a blueprint for the future” way. That old way often ended by damming up life here and now so as to burst in a final damnation on everything. With believers flying the coop just before. So why worry about this world?

Moltmann’s point is that a future hope has a way of wending its way back into the scrub and din of everyday life. In fact, it is the Christian hope of resurrection that feeds a very different way of looking at life:

Just as death is not only the end, but an event belonging to the whole of life, so the resurrection too must not be reduced to “a life after death.” The resurrection is also an event belonging to the whole of life. It is the reason for a full acceptance of life here without any reservation. (Moltmann, Jürgen. The Coming of God, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.  66)

To me, that is a meaty stew that feeds my yearning to live fully in the present. And engage with people in the present (as much as my sadly-abstract soul will allow). I’ve been watching this hope work backward into my unscrolling days, changing them one by one.

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Image Credit: DKNG via thisisnthappiness