Jesus, as we know, was drawn like a magnet to the already-vulnerable. The widows and the orphans, the little children, the social outcasts and the sinners, the poor and the sick. Those were his people, his beloved.

And I think Jesus had an amazing insight about these people, which was this: if the world promises you nothing but suffering, then maybe the end of that world doesn’t sound like such a bad thing. In fact, perhaps that is exactly what you’ve been dreaming about: the destruction of this world and its present arrangements – which offer no hope – and the birth of a new world with different arrangements and the possibility of hope.