If Christianity be not altogether thoroughgoing eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ…. All that is not hope is wooden, hobbledehoy, blunt-edged, and sharp-pointed, like the word `Reality’….But to wait is the most profound truth of our normal, everyday life and work, quite apart from being Christians…. We ask nothing better or higher than the Cross, where God is manifested as God. We must, in fact, be servants who wait for the coming of their Lord.
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans