2 AUG 08: GOTTA GO, GOTTA GO RIGHT NOW
(BLOGGER'S NOTE: You may find the following item humorous, serious, or a little of both - but we offer these thoughts from time to time, as we keep a seventh-day Sabbath.)
The very mention of it sounds absurd - we'll pay you 20 million dollars over ten years NOT to play pro football. How many rookies in the Atlanta Falcons training camp would jump at that offer?
But this offer is being made in Green Bay, Wisconsin -- and it's only for star quarterback Brett Favre. The Packers want him to live up to his announcement of retirement in March. But Favre has had second thoughts, and applied this week to be reinstated in the league. I wonder if reinstatement rules require him to know the secret audible....
The Green Bay Packers want to use a different starting quarterback, and started planning for that after Brett Favre announced his retirement. The 20-million dollar offer would allow Favre to be involved in team "marketing." In some corners of big U.S. cities, this used to be called hush money.
While Brett Favre's case may seem rare, I suspect it happens more often than we think. I know a local man who "resigned" from a long-time job this week. That was the official wording, at least - but the man made it sound to me like he was forced into retirement. And unlike that church in Phenix City, the co-workers couldn't vote to keep him in.
This man is in his mid-sixties, and suddenly finds his career essentially over. I understand he'll mix Social Security checks with some kind of part-time job, but he clearly isn't happy about it. Yet he didn't raise a fuss at work at the end of it all. As they say, he didn't go away mad - he simply went away.
This local man apparently will not leave with a severance check, or even a gold watch. At least Brett Favre is being offered a "golden parachute" out of playing pro football -- which for a quarterback beats one or two more ordinary sacks.
It may sound strange, but I felt more emotion about the local man's departure than I did when I was dismissed from jobs years ago. Perhaps it's because I'm getting older, and I could be in the same position someday. But a 20-million offer not to blog WOULD be awfully tempting.
I pondered this man's final day as I was driving Friday morning - and as I arrived home, a song started playing on the radio that I knew would push me over the edge. Yet I knew I had to hear it, and let some tears flow in the car....
The song's message is really about remembering God in all we do. I hope this local man does that, in a time of challenging transition. Yet this video prepared for an Adventist school's graduation in North Carolina has additional words of encouragement -- Biblical words, which express my current feelings better than I could think to do.
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