What may a Christian hope for in this life? Part 8

Yet even before the return of Christ, a christian may have hope for this life. In Jesus resurrection, the eschaton, the end has broken into history. In pouring out the Holy Spirit, Jesus has blessed his church with ‘the powers of the age to come” .
”They come out of the promised future of Christ into our present and fill us with new vitality. In the community of Christ we experience foretastes and anticipations of God’s coming kingdom.”
Moltmann
Christians are given the Holy Spirit as a firstfruits and foretaste of the future kingdom. By God’s strength we may hope that God will be glorified by our lives , we may hope for God’s healing of our bodies , we may hope for God to intervene and overrule in the the affairs of kings and men . Though we wait for the eternal feast, we may begin celebrating our salvation now,
“In joy over the open fulness of God, out of which we receive not just ‘grace upon grace’ but also... life upon life, the life we live here and now is already transfigured and becomes a festive life, life in celebration”
Moltmann
Just as death is not the necessary barrier to the final end of the believer, the final end is not a complete barrier to the kingdom blessings of God for which we hope. Hope remains hope until that final fulfilment. The foretastes only make us hungrier,
“ That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world,for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present”
Moltmann