NFL Quarterback’s Pre-Game Generosity Impacts Family
There was a time when the bread-winner of the family worked a night shift in a low paying job and relied on food stamps to feed their large family. But that all changed after the Saint Louis Rams won the Super Bowl in 2000. And because of those humble beginnings that man and his family are known as the most generous supporters of charitable causes of any NFL player. But apart from that, the Warner family makes it a point, knowing that they are blessed, to be generous in many other ways.
Kurt Warner, the two-time NFL MVP quarterback of the Arizona Cardinals, started a family tradition he calls The Restaurant Game. The night before he heads out for a road game, Kurt and his wife Brenda take their seven children out to a restaurant to eat a family dinner. One they are seated, one of the children will scan the dining area like a quarterback scans the field looking for potential receivers. When the child picks a table, Kurt asks the waiter to add that table’s dinner tab to his own – anonymously. So on any given pre-game night a family eats freely because of the goodness of a family that knows it is blessed beyond measure. (Karen Crouse, “Warner Sets Example for His Family and the Cardinals,” www.nytimes.com, 9/26/08)
We too eat freely from the smorgasbord of God’s grace extended to us in the birth of the Son of God, who became flesh and blood and body and soul and lived among us and died for us that we might receive the free gift of salvation and be called Children of God.
And so we have sampled the Word who is Christ and we have Received the Word who is Christ and we have Seen the Word who is Christ and we have recognized the Word as the Grace of God in Christ.
And so the biblical writer declares, How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! I John 3:1
From a sermon by Monty Newton, Words, 1/2/2010