Since it was urgent, they only made us wait eight hours. The good thing was that both of us thought ahead and brought books to read. Mine was called, Surprised by Hope, a new book by N.T. Wright. Needless to say, I finished it in the waiting room.
The book is essentially about the resurrection of Jesus and its implications for our lives as Christians. In his final section, Wright addresses what he sees as the implications for our social action and involvement. I'd like to pass along a long quote from that section. Now, to be clear: I wouldn't endorse all of Wright's wording in this quote. I would want to add some nuance to some of what he writes. But it is a thought-provoking section, nonetheless:
"The point of this final section of the book is that a proper grasp of the (surprising ) future hope held out to us in Jesus Christ leads directly and, to many people, equally surprisingly, to a vision of the present hope that is the basis of all Christian mission. To hope for a better future in the world -- for the poor, the sick, the lonely and depressed, for the slaves, the refugees, the hungry and homeless, for the abused, the paranoid, the downtrodden and despairing, and in fact for the whole wide, wonderful and wounded world -- is not something else, something extra, something tacked on to the gospel as an afterthought. And to work for that intermediate hope, the surprising hope that comes forward from God's ultimate future into God's urgent present, is not a distraction from the central task of mission and evangelism int he present... When we turn to Paul, the verse that has always struck me in this connection is 1 Corinthians 15:58. Paul, we remind ourselves, has just written the longest and densest chapter in any of his letters, discussing the future resurrection of the body in great and complex detail. How might we expect him to finish such a chapter? By saying, 'Therefore, since you have such a great hope, sit back and relax because you know God's got a great future in store for you'? No. Instead, he says, 'Therefore, my beloved ones, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain'" (N.T. Wright, Surprised By Hope, pp 191-192).
JLM