Hope Leading Reality

Jade and I were looking up the word "hope" in my IVP reference library in the Dictionary of Paul and his letters and I ran across this paragraph. I really loved what it had to say so I'll post it here.

Paul's thinking about hope has had a tremendous impact on modern theologians who have sought to recover the significance of the future for Christian thinking. The Christian faith lives from the raising of Christ from the dead and strains toward the hope of a future given by God. In the promises of God, the hidden future announces itself and exerts an influence on the present through the hope it awakens. Hope's statements of promise stand in contradiction to present reality; hope leads reality toward the promised transformation. Christians who live in hope are "coworkers" with Christ, loving and striving for the glorious kingdom as well as waiting patiently for it.