Sirach 35:18. "And the Lord will not delay, neither will he be patient with them, till he crushes the loins of the unmerciful and repays vengeance on the nations; till he takes away the multitude of the insolent, and breaks the scepters of the unrighteous."

I think there is no denying that "the nations" could use with some vengeance right now, they are full of the insolent, unrighteous, and unmerciful. The lowly have been crushed and the corrupt rewarded for too long now for it to go unavenged. Unfortunately, we are all living in some nation, which means we will all feel the vengeance to some degree or another. And the truth of the matter is that we have all contributed to the state of our nations and the world in some in some way.

As I see the necessity of Divine intervention right now, what I am trying to do is look inward and identify the times when I have been unmerciful, or insolent, or unrighteous. I can always find times I have been, and I must atone for them. I also have patterns of behavior that lead me to these sins, and those patterns must be changed, as well. The first step in atonement is recognition - allowing the blinders to fall from my eyes and see that I am a sinner just as much as everyone else is. Rather than focus on the sins of others, which admittedly can be blinding, I have to focus on my own sins and try to start fixing them.

We must remember that we will face God individually, not as part of a nation, political party, oppressed minority, or whatever other identity we have chosen for ourselves. If we remember this, and think about the behavior we will have to try to defend in His perfect sight, it becomes much easier to see our flaws.

The beginning of change for the nations and the world will be when each individual stops looking outward for someone to blame for this mess we are in, and starts looking inward at the mess inside themselves. This is the only mess we have real control over, and this is the mess God wants to help us clean up individually. To the extent it seems that the Lord is delaying in His vengeance, it is only because He is giving us more time to do this. He actually is being patient with us, but, as Sirach says, when His time for vengeance comes, He will not delay, nor will He be patient any longer.