Through the hallway. Out the door of the CNN Center. Down the sidewalk. Up the ramps. Up the stairs.

I settled into the orange seat near the rafters of the Georgia Dome on January 2 just after the evening session at Passion 2013 started.

It was the first full session I was able to see. The day before, I had sorted socks for hours before grabbing a quick dinner, watching a few minutes of the opening session and heading off to volunteer at Kneel, the student prayer room.

I’m totally biased, but the prayer room is the absolutely best place to serve during a Passion event. Students come and go throughout the event – kneeling, standing, sitting, prostrating themselves in prayer. One afternoon, they waited in line until the over-packed prayer rooms had space for them to pray!

Sometimes they silently mouth the words of the quiet worship music playing in the background. As someone who can’t talk without using her hands, I appreciated the deep, intense prayer of one young lady who was using her hands just as if God himself was standing right in front of her having a conversation.

Which, in a sense, He was.

But, it’s surprisingly exhausting.

That’s what brought me to the bright orange chair on Wednesday night at Passion 2013.

I stood for bit for the worship, but eventually leaned back against the seat, not quite sitting and not quite standing.

Even as I sang along, I was thinking about my one word for 2013. Passion 2012 had given me my word for last year and I was praying that my experience this year would do the same.

This is what was rolling through my mind as Christy Nockels started to sing the song in the video below.

There it was.

It wasn’t that a bolt of lightning shot through the Georgia Dome. It was that this song, written who knows how long before this moment, had captured all my thoughts about 2013.

I had been thinking about concentrating on classic writers – Christian and non-Christian – like C.S. Lewis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Shakespeare, Flannery O’Connor and scores of others during the year. Many of the ones I hoped to read were Christians and their faith informed their art. Through reading their works, I thought I could capture an artist’s rendering of God.

And prayer. I so wanted to improve my prayer life, to be able to have the courage to ask God for big things, to praise him for everything and to pray for others over anything.

And then there was this thought I tweeted during the approximately 5 minutes of Beth Moore’s talk that morning:

Less than a minute into @bethmoorelpm‘s talk at #Passion2013 and hearing confirmation of morning prayer. Unquenchable love for the Word.

— Tammie Gitt (@TammieGitt) January 2, 2013

 

And then, I heard this:

My delight is in you Lord
On your Word I set my heart
You are peace, you are calm for my restless soul
You light my way through the dark
I want to know you even more …

Delight. That was it. My word for 2013. This is the year I explore what it means to delight in the Lord through prayer, reading his word, memorizing passages with the Siesta Scripture Memory Team, discovering Him in the works of writers and musicians and finding Him in community with other believers.

I can’t wait to explore what it means …

© 2013, Just Tammie. All rights reserved.