The Weekly Fare . . . December 31, 2002
Starting The New Year With Darrell Green
If you read this column fairly regularly you know I am a big sports fan. Sports - team sports in particular - are not only entertaining but are also excellent teachers when it comes to the more important things in life, especially as regards how we are to live in relation to one another. So when I read of some of the darker, less than inspiring events that are so much a part of professional sports these days, I cringe.
If you're a Christian in any sense of the word, it's not unlike the feeling you have when you see one of the made-up and made-over televangelist of our day. (You know, the one's the modern media portray as the official representatives of "American Christianity.") You get kind of nauseous. No. You get very nauseous.
So when an individual hits a perfect note in the less than perfect symphony of American Sport, I am inclined to do whatever I can to amplify it. One such note/story/person is the retiring conerback for the Washington Redskins, Darrell Green.
For the last 20 years Green has scrambled, jumped, stopped, started and back-pedaled all over the NFL. He has seen the coming and going of the likes of Walter Payton, Joe Montana, Barry Sanders, John Elway and Dan Marino and in the process has intercepted and tackled them all. He holds the consecutive season interception record (19) and holds every Redskin record (the only team he ever played for) relative to games played in and started. His bust will grace a podium at the NFL Hall of Fame in no time, and his peers routinely refer to him as the greatest to ever play his position.
All-Universe receiver Jerry Rice, who holds the "record for records," said the only man that could truly cover him game-in and game-out was Darrell Green, and if you understand the way the cornerback position is played, that's like beating Mario Andretti in the Indy 500... in reverse.
All that's pretty impressive - 20 years impressive - but it's just the beginning for Darrell Green. Because in addition to touchdowns, Darrell Green saves lives.
In December of 1987, 4 years into his career, Darrell Green responded to a request to come sign autographs for some inner-city youth. It was a "Christmas thing" intended to last 30 minutes or so, one of dozens of invitations he received and mostly responded to every year. But this one turned out to last a little bit longer. Driving home alone that night back to the suburbs, Green couldn't get one particular under-fed, under-clothed little boy out of his mind. Somewhere in the process he received a whisper. It said something to the effect that "Autographs weren't really what these children need..."
The words settled to that place in his heart where he could not help but hear them. Whatever had been there before was now gone, and Grace was poured in. He wept like a baby. "A Texas cloudburst," as he recalls it. If you've ever had such a whisper you know what he's talking about.
The next day he was meeting with lawyers - the following week with potential volunteers and staff. Six months later the "Darrell Green Youth Life Foundation" was formed. Over the last sixteen years the Foundation has shaped the lives of thousands of children through it's two primary programs: Youth Life Learning Centers and the National Training Institute. Through attending Youth Life Learning Centers (comprehensive after-school and full summer program services), these children are able to see for themselves just how bright their future can be. At the National Training Institute, committed citizens are taught the skills necessary to establish and operate Learning Centers in their own communities across America.
So the question remains. Why do men under the same circumstances of sudden fame and fortune, take such radically divergent paths? One starting a program to save disadvantaged youth from the sticky web of drugs and crime, while another falls prey to the same?
Who knows? But I have a hunch that both are given the whisper. Some choose to turn and face their burning bush... others refuse to feel it's warmth and let it burn quietly as they walk on by. There are several thousand people out there with bright futures who thank God and their lucky stars that Darrell Green was one such person who just couldn't or wouldn't keep walking.
Yesterday just before he left the stadium after his final game, Darrell Green returned to the center of the field and back-pedaled one last time like a cornerback defending on an out pattern... After jogging off the field Green was asked his thoughts on such a career ending day.
He fought off tears for a moment and then collecting himself stated, "I started off just wanting to be a good football player, like most kids would want to be, and realized that God has more planned for me... It is my goal not only to end a career, but to launch into a future and a life that carries on the purpose of God in this generation... to change the world for all that is good and right and of Him..."
May we all begin the New Year with Darrell Green, reborn in it's growing light, fearing not the uncertainties and pain of this world but confident that God's purpose will be fulfilled in this generation and those to come... and doing our part to make it so.
Godspeed Darrell.... Keep on runnin'.