Waiting for Easter

My wife and I sat at the table with our kids. We were dying Easter eggs when the memory came to me. I dunked an egg and looked at my family. “When I was younger, we used to watch The Ten Commandments when it came on television.” I doubted any of our kids knew what I was talking about, so I turned to my wife and continued. “I liked that movie—we waited every year for it to come on. Did you watch it when you were little?”

With the memories now flooding my mind, I could picture how eager my siblings and I would be each Palm Sunday when the movie was broadcasted. “We waited all year, then tried to stay up and watch it.”

My wife nodded, but again, it seemed as though I was speaking a language our children couldn’t understand. I noted their confusion. Turning to our kids, I explained. “Back then, you couldn’t watch things whenever you wanted. You had to wait a whole year for the movie you wanted to be on TV. It was a big thing. You didn’t want to miss it.”

One of our children jumped into the conversation. “Why didn’t you just watch Prince of Egypt or something?”

I laughed. “Because I was born in the 1900’s.”

The comment made my wife laugh as well. “We both were. And The Prince of Egypt didn’t exist when we were little.” My wife grinned from ear to ear. “The Ten Commandments is an old movie.”

Our foreign exchange student began googling movies on her phone. “Prince of Egypt came out in 1998.”

My wife laughed again. “Exactly. We were adults when they came out.”

We continued coloring eggs and enjoying one another’s company, but my mind wandered further. I could picture Charlton Heston standing with the staff in his hand. I could remember the love triangle and power struggle that captivated the hearts of millions of viewers. I remember how old Moses looked when he was up on that hill at the end—the one time I made it to the end of the movie without falling asleep (author laughs at himself).

These memories also make me think of my childhood as a whole. Just like the movie, things were very simple back then. It leads me to my point—the very thing none of our children could understand—I lived in a time that people knew how to wait.

“You waited a whole year, Dad?”

Can you imagine asking someone in today’s Netflix/Amazon Prime culture to wait a whole year to watch a movie? More than that, remind them to be ready—because you cannot pause the movie for snack breaks. Their reaction would be comical, I’m sure.

Today’s culture expects nothing less than the instantaneous. We wait for nothing, and measure things by ease of access—which is now milliseconds. If Netflix or Amazon Prime doesn’t have what you’re looking for, we feel the world is coming to an end.

Yet things get worse.

The shortening of our attention spans has produced little positive effect. We do not know how to wait for anything anymore, and our demands reflect it. Drive through windows have been around for a while, yet now we frequent those who have “quicker” service—those who have mastered the ability to get your order out the window more efficiently than the competitor. I’m amazed when we don’t choose where we will eat based on taste, but speed.

Our short attention span has also changed the literary market. Moby Dick is a classic, written in a day and age when people enjoyed reading descriptive language. Back then, there were no televisions, and people read big words and engrossed themselves in lengthy depictions. Imaginations flourished and minds pictured the words on page. Herman Melville’s novel had a word count of a bit more than 209,000 words. On today’s shelves, most fiction books are less than half of that.

Social media targeting proves we have little time for anything other than our own specific interests. Targeting has become a science. Unless you are not on social media, you cannot avoid it. Advertisers invest where their dollars will most likely return. There is no excess. No waste. No waiting for customers.

Perhaps the most obvious and potentially dangerous example I can think of is the current trend in kids’ movies and YouTube videos. These movies, clips, and videos intensify the craving for constant action. There is little time for the viewer to rest between scenes of rapid movement. If you pay attention to YouTube influencers, they do not breathe between words and phrases. By intentional editing, almost heart-poundingly fast content is produced for things that are by themselves, not all that exciting. This produces clicks. Views. Revenue. We are creating a climate for the next generation to be driven by adrenaline.

We stop at red lights, yet multitask. We cram every second of our day clear full. We are a microwaving, short cut taking, GPS navigating, artificial-intelligence-homework-assignment-using society.

But I know how to wait.

In fact, I sometimes enjoy waiting.

My generation could wait on a fish to bite your bait, stand in line for a rollercoaster, watch a deer come out of the woods, wait for spring to bloom from a long winter, and plan on watching The Ten Commandments on Palm Sunday. I don’t think waiting hurts anyone. I might sound crazy by today’s standards, but I believe waiting produces a finer person. Waiting for something lets you appreciate things. It teaches you to value what you wait for. It develops you into a person who is punctual and dependable when the time is right to enjoy something.

Waiting makes things special.

Someone once said, “good things come to those who wait.” As I muse that expression, I realize Easter is nearing. It is the time of year we celebrate victory, salvation, hope, rebirth, and renewal. I love Easter. In our house, we celebrate Good Friday because the death of Jesus Christ satisfied the penalty for our sins. We celebrate Easter Sunday because the resurrection of Christ from the dead—and the victory he won over death—brings us the hope of a glorious future. Christ’s resurrection is the single greatest event in the history of humankind.

And so, I think. Deeply. Even Jesus had to wait. His body lay in the grave for three days. Forgive my mind for wondering, but I imagine it would be painstakingly hard to wait that long for such an incredible event to occur. Yet He did. All for a reason. He had a plan. He fulfilled scripture. For you. For me.

He waited.

Even Jesus waited.

By Chuck Carr