What’s the rush to enter the gates of heaven?

The closing service for Yom Kippur is called Neilah. The poems and liturgy of this service reflects the spiritual concept of the closing of the gates of Heaven, which have been kept open to receive our final prayers and supplications. Some of you might be thinking, there is never a time when we are not welcome to return to God. If God is always eager to receive a sinner in repentance, then what’s the rush? If God does not close His gates, and prevent people from entering His presence, why is there a service telling people the gates are about to close so they better pray with all they’ve got? If we live only with the assumption that repentance always is available, then we would never be motivated to actually change at a particular instance. Just as knowledge of our certain mortality infuses our life with a need to seize the day, so does the push of Yom Kippur as a time particularly favorable to teshuvah (repentance) inspire us to more focused contemplation than a more open-ended proce