Many Christian thinkers have come to see evolution as a pattern of ongoing progress, one begun in God, drawn forward by God, and culminating in an encounter with the fullness of God. Christian believers can look, then, upon human experience as an ever-greater opening to a fullness latent in all human longing, but now unveiled and made operative by the coming of Jesus Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit—God’s great sending and outpouring which moves creation toward a completion which is identical with the Kingdom of God.
Christian spirituality contains aspects of looking back, but it must also contain look around in reflection. Its fundamental orientation is looking forward toward a tomorrow glimpsed only by hope. †