Happy New Year! We welcomed the new decade of the 20’s in Atlanta, Georgia at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
In 1996, a few months after we were married, we attended the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta, arriving the day after the infamous bombing. Talking about chaotic – rerouting of people in order to accommodate this new thing called bag screening and x-ray for our safety and to get into the events. Almost twenty-four years later, it’s hard to fathom not going through all that process to enter an event or airport. The Mercedes-Benz Stadium has “a no bag unless they are clear” policy. The world has changed, and it felt like that was a day that slowly began that particular type of change.
Prior to the Olympics, Atlanta gave people an opportunity to be a part of building the Olympic Park. Our first event of placing a mark on this world as a married couple was to buy a brick in Olympic Park. Oh, how exciting that was deciding together what to write on our brick. Twenty-four years later we went to visit our brick.
The security ladies, first, kicked us out of the area where our brick was, long story, then decided, after Jay spoke to their supervisor, to help us find our brick and take our picture.
Twenty-four years. Think back, what were you doing? How were you preparing for what you are doing now? What marks were you placing?
For us, we always knew we loved to travel. We took a week at a time, however most of our travels were long weekends. In 1996 we were working hard and, one of us, was working some pretty long hours. (Jay) Later my job became increasingly more and more until a few years ago my auto immune decided it had enough.
Twenty-four years ago, for the first time in my life, my auto immune was not cooperating. I remember having to take a nap under a highway bridge or in the park between the Olympic events.
This New Years we celebrated with 65,000 attendees, average age – twenty-four, along with 3,000 volunteers at a conference called Passion 2020. These young adults, many not even born at the time of the 1996 Olympics, and probably not born when Louis Giglio and his team had the vision of this amazing church and young adult’s event. This year’s event had more volunteers than there were attendees in 1997.
“What no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”….exceedingly abundantly more? I think so.
We had the privilege of sitting with our neice, Annie, and her longtime dance friend, sweet Mia. Pat Kelly, you and Mia could share clothes. She’s so tiny and as precious as the smile you see in the picture.
Jay’s sister, Debi, and brother-in-law, Bryan, were two of the volunteers this year.
Speakers such as Levi Lusko, John Piper, Christine Caine, Tim Tebow, Ravi Zacharias, and the one who hit it out of the stadium, Duck Dynasty’s, Sadie Robertson. Wow, that young lady is one speaker to follow. Jay and I love that these young adults have someone their age to follow. And, we learned from her as well. The music was, well….loud. Thank goodness for earplugs. This is where we did feel our age. However, the young adults worshipped to this music, and for us, that was the joyful noise.
Levi Lusko, a pastor from Montana, used the term roaring 20’s. He took us through a little blast of the past reminding us of the 1920’s, then some outcomes that occurred in the 1930’s, due to our actions in the 1920’s. The dustbowl was one of the largest natural disasters due to ignorance in our actions of the previous decade. Being an okie-at-heart, I never knew the full story of the dustbowl. (Remember, I slept through history.) Of course, Levi used my mother’s favorite phrase, “If you don’t remember the past, the past will repeat itself”.
Remembering the past is obviously important and, many times fun to remanice, however let’s not live in it. Let’s keep learning and improving.
He challenged those attending by asking, “What are you building your life on”? “How will what you are doing today and this decade affect the next one”? As parents and grandparents, I feel these questions are pretty relevant to us older folks as well. How would you answer those questions?
Christine Caine threw out some challenges of being committed. She said this generation has a bad reputation of no commitment. Her challenge was to commit to having real relationships and get off so much social media that is causing anxiety, depression, loneliness, and fomo. Commit to being involved in our communities, commit to actually going to church not internet church. Commit to prayer and reading your bible. She also reminded us of our real purpose in life is to love.
Sadie Robertson amazingly built upon Levi’s talk. She asked the questions, “What are you seeking? Where are you searching for it? And, when you have found it, how will you know”? If you have a chance, Google the YouTube of her talk.
Statistics say there are approximately 3,865 language groups in the world who have never had the opportunity to read or hear words from the bible. The Passion Conference’s mission was to raise money to help the organizations that interpret the bible into different languages in order to have it available to those language groups by the year 2033. Louis challenged these college-age people to donating one million to begin this new endeavor. Poor college kids, one million dollars, are you kidding!?
Exceedingly abundantly…..they donated 1,200,000!
Numerous times over the two and a half days in downtown Atlanta, Jay and I commented on how courteous, kind, and committed these young adults were. If these 65,000 are our future leaders, we’re feeling pretty good about our future.
With that, all the questions and challenges brought forth to ponder and act upon such as, What are you building your life on? What are you seeking? Where are you searching for it? And, when you have found it, how will you know?….. And a couple American fixes, off we go again.
Blessings, Jay and Kelly
A Year with Jay and Kelly 