Here's where John Henry Newman gave a powerful image. He said that the road of human history, which the prophets had pointed straight toward the horizon, right toward the ominous clouds of the Day of the Lord, on Christmas night suddenly took a right turn at the brink of the cliff of eternity.

Jesus stepped into our world exactly there, and planted his feet on the cliff of time. Now we are running down the road along the cliff together, just a step away from eternity. One day the road will veer sharply to the left once again, and then we will enter everything that the prophets told of the Day of the Lord.

Newman's picture is a good one, and it helps explain so much of what we know is true. It helps us to live in the way that Paul challenges in his letter to the Thessalonians without all of the craziness that we see in people like Delta Dawn and Screwy Louis. Living in Advent, living in anticipation of Jesus' return, must still be something that we do in this world without becoming mad lunatics. After all, Jesus Himself prayed for us in this way: "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them" (John 17:15).

The Delta Dawns and the Screwy Louis aren't really in this world anymore. They've left this world behind and entered the Twilight Zone. They have checked out of reality. But if John Henry Newman's picture is correct, and if we are running a course at the edge of the cliff of history, all of the things that Paul says here make a great deal of sense. Earlier Paul says that there are two kinds of people who travel this road.

Those Who Sleep

Some are sleepers. They just move down the road, but they haven't got a clue what kind of road we are on. I thought of that when we were on the "Going to the Sun Highway" in Glacier National Park last summer. It climbs and climbs until you are above the clouds!

For most of its length the road is cut right out of the side of the mountains. On one side of the car you stare into a rock wall that goes up forever. On the other side you peer out into space. There's nothing there! The edge of the mountain drops right off below you.

I remember the first time I went over that road. It was a dreary day, and as we started up into the pass the clouds came down and hid us in a swirling world of fog. We couldn't see beyond the edges of the road, and simply followed the car in front of us. But the next day, when we returned back over the pass, the skies were clear. Suddenly we saw what we had navigated in blindness the day before! Sheer cliffs! A road at the edge of nothing! It was scary!

But the day before, shrouded in clouds, we were totally unaware of it all. Nothing frightened us, nothing amazed us.

Sometimes people meander through life like that. Paul calls them sleepers. Here they are, on the edge of eternity, next to the greatest panorama of beauty and wonder and awesome magnificence anyone could ever imagine, and all they do is watch the road. Life, for them, is a dull routine, lost in the fog. They make life so much less than it could be. They reduce an adventure to a tedious march. They hear a magnificent symphony and complain because they can't hum the tune. They only look for a job, and never a career. They want sex, but they can't be bothered with a relationship. They see a work of art and only ask how much it costs.