All of this is summed up in a brilliant little sentence in 1 Corinthians 11:26. ‘Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup,’ says Paul, ‘you announce the Lord’s death until he comes.’ The present moment (‘whenever’) somehow holds together the one-off past event (‘the Lord’s death’) and the great future when God’s world will be remade under Jesus’ loving rule (‘until he comes’). Past and future come rushing together into the present, pouring an ocean of meaning into the little bottle of ‘now’.