God is not something in
the Beyond, but he is coming and as the coming One he is present. He promises a
new world of all-embracing life, of righteousness and truth, and with this
promise he constantly calls this world in question—not because to the eye of
hope it is as nothing, but because to the eye of the hope it is not yet what it
has the prospect of being (p. 164).
God is not below us, above us, but before us.
Instead of us moving towards him, he is coming to us. In the light of his promise,
we are not satisfied with what we see in the present, for the present
conditions are far from the future conditions as promised by God. The eye of hope
does not overlook the problem of the world, escape from it, and create our own
utopia. Rather, the eye of hope fully engages with the worldly problems because
the cross of Christ grounds the Christian hope in history. The eye of hope is
not succumbed to the present-historic contexts because of the not-yet prospect
of the promise of the coming kingdom of God. The resurrection of Jesus dealt
with death and its evilness, transcended it, and has guaranteed the promise of
not-yet in the present. Thus, what is not
yet gives us an access to the future horizon of what is to come and allows
us to engage prophetically with what is already,
which is being transformed within the horizon of the history of the working of
God’s promises. God is before us and coming to us. Newness is possible before us. An anticipation of such newness in life points us to look at the God of promise ahead of us. The future newness keeps us in perspective that what we see and have now will pass away and become obsolete soon in the light of the newness to come.
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