“Of whom were you worried and fearful
When you lied, and did not remember Me
Nor give Me a thought?
Was I not silent even for a long time
So you do not fear Me?
“I will declare your righteousness and your deeds,
But they will not profit you.
“When you cry out, let your collection of idols deliver you.
But the wind will carry all of them up,
And a breath will take them away.
But he who takes refuge in Me will inherit the land
And will possess My holy mountain.”
And it will be said,
“Build up, build up, prepare the way,
Remove every obstacle out of the way of My people.”
For thus says the high and exalted One
Who lives forever, whose name is Holy,
“I dwell on a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.
“For I will not contend forever,
Nor will I always be angry;
For the spirit would grow faint before Me,
And the breath of those whom I have made. (Isaiah 57:11-16)

The long stretches of silence when God does nothing to the wicked can lull everyone into a false sense of security. God’s silence does not mean that he won’t act. It also doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care. When the righteous cried out for relief and nothing happened; when Joseph remained a slave or in prison for eighteen long years; when his people rotted in Egypt for four hundred years; when Israel suffered captivity in Babylon for seventy years. When the Messiah tarried his arrival for hundreds of years—it never meant that God had stopped caring. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t busy. God does not contend with people without end, he does not leave them to twist in the wind. He understands that human beings are limited, that there is only so much that they can endure. But like a good trainer with his athletes, God knows that they can be pushed further than they imagine. Just one more push up; just one more lap. Then do it again.

But eventually it will be time to hit the showers. Eventually game time comes. Relief arrives only after hard work, after all. You don’t get a vacation because you were sitting around all day. You get it for a reason: you’ve been working hard. That reason just isn’t so much fun and we’d all like the vacation sooner than we really need it.

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