Once a minister at my church asked the congregation to reflect on their understanding of Christian hope. A lady so tiny with age that when she stood up her hat was just visible above the pew said: “The first thing I’ll do when I get to heaven, I’ll run and find my grandma. She loved me so much!” Her small voice crackled with anticipation. This hope of hers was almost too confident to be called hope. But our modern understanding may have impoverished its meaning somewhat. In New Testament Greek, the word translated as hope seems to have meant something closer to expectation.

In any case, some homely, profoundly beautiful thing had befallen her many decades before, and so the great drama of immortality in which she trusted was for her chiefly the occasion for one highly particular hug, scented, no doubt, with laundry starch. She imagined herself running like a child through the New Jerusalem, taking no note of its splendours, avid as a child would be for one voice, one face, one touch.