The long night of waiting

Over 2000 years ago, the Jewish people eagerly awaited their deliverer -- their Messiah. In a cruel twist of man's fallen nature, many of them didn't recognize His arrival. Two millennia later, we who belong to Him eagerly await His return, and face the trials of each age with the understanding His delay is rooted in His grace.

As C.S. Lewis put it:

...I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage, the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else--something never entered your head to conceive--comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without any disguise, something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.