Christians are marked not only by patience, but also by longing. We are oriented to our future hope, yet we do not try to escape from our present reality, from the real and pressing brokenness and suffering in the world. As Smith puts it, we “will always sit somewhat uneasy in the present, haunted by the brokenness of the ‘now.’ The future we hope for—a future when justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream—hangs over our present and gives us a vision of what to work for in the here and now as we continue to pray, ‘Your kingdom come.’”9 We live in a brutal
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