It took me a while to finish Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book about Dr. Fauci and Co.

My niece told me she only got part way through before she had to read the book I’d given her at Christmas, one about what we as Christians should do in these crazy times.

“It was too much to take,” she’d told me, regarding the book about Fauci.

I understood exactly.

“I could only read the book in small portions,” I told my mom on the phone recently, as we talked about Kennedy’s book. “It’s well-written and has a billion footnotes to news sources to back it all up, but the realization of what’s been going on for decades is almost too much to bear.”

My mom has a copy of the book; she’d requested one, so I’d sent it to her.

“If you don’t finish it, I would understand,” I said.

“I’m reading it little bits at a time,” she said.

“It’s not easy, realizing the truth of what’s going on. It’s a lot to carry, and I couldn’t read it all at once,” I explained. “Sometimes I’d rather not know. That’d be easier.”

You are responsible for what you know. That’s a serious thing.

We see that principle sprinkled through the Bible, particularly in Luke 12. If you know the truth of the Gospel but reject it, you are judged more harshly than if you did not know. If you know something, but willfully ignore or do not act accordingly, God sees.

There are a lot of heads stuck in the sand right now; I suspect some, at this point, have a sense of things but don’t want to know.

I told mom what happened the night I finally finished the book.

“I was up late, and finished it when it was dark and the house was quiet,” I explained.

I turned the last page, and even though Kennedy tried to end it on a positive note, saying he’d see the readers at the barricades, I started to cry. I closed the cover, and put my head down on the book.

Psalm 73 very much came to mind, reminding me that in the course of history, I wasn’t alone in this moment.

God, how long will you let these people do this? How long will you let them get rich off of the suffering and destruction of people’s lives? These same people have been doing the same thing for a long time. When will you stop them?

When will God stop the injustice of crooked politicians and leaders and doctors worshipping at the altar of money? When will God deal with the cowards who could have said something and stopped the murder of people but chose job and reputation instead? When will God strike those in power who manipulate misery into personal gain? When will God crush those who crush others for their own pleasure and power? When will God deal with the regimes all around the world who have slaughtered their people and hidden it? The organizations who lie to get power and money and spread division and lawlessness?

I don’t know when, exactly, and I didn’t know that night. I just felt sick inside from the weight of what I’d read, and all the human misery.

But then I lifted my head and I saw, sitting on the table, the devotional book my friend and I try to read from each day, one that goes through the book of Revelation verse-by-verse. The cover of the book shows a view of the temple mount in Jerusalem, with the Mount of Olives behind it.

When Christ appears.

There it was. The answer.

I still don’t know the specific when, but I know it’s all over when Christ appears.

There’s a lot of judgment leading up to that moment, but when Christ appears and his feet set down on the Mount of Olives, it all ends. Gone is our wrongly-conceived cuddly, meek, glassy-eyed, gentle Jesus, the one people like to pervert into allowing any and all things out of “love.” We instead see the full revelation of him in his fierce glory, and he will rule with a rod of iron.

There will be no injustice and shenanigans during his reign.

There is incredible injustice in this world. But hold on just a little longer. God is still working.

Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Proverbs 18:10 has been running through my mind for weeks, and I’m glad.