You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to roll over a cliff.
You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on
the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up
for a building site. You are—strange though it may seem, almost as hard to
believe as the resurrection itself—accomplishing something that will
become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love,
gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of
God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching
a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and

nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings…all of this
will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new
creation that God will one day make.
-N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope (p. 208)