Deion Sanders’ advice to his son Shedeur after draft slide

Deion Sanders is the head coach of the Colorado Buffaloes, but he is also known to sports fans as one of the greatest athletes of all time. As a football player, he was named to the Pro Bowl eight times, won two Super Bowls, and was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame in 2011. As a baseball player, he played in the major leagues with several teams.

During the 1989 season, he hit a home run in the MLB and scored a touchdown in the NFL in the same week, becoming the only player ever to do so.

Now he is in the news, however, not as an athlete but as a father. His son Shedeur slid from being drafted in the first round, as many anticipated, to the fifth round. Nonetheless, Deion stated on social media,

Everybody’s worried about what happened yesterday & fear the possibilities of what will happen tomorrow when we should be focused on NOW! What we do with our NOW is what matters the most. Let’s make the most of our NOW.

Sanders is right about his son’s football future. For example, Tony Romo went undrafted in 2003 before starring for years as the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback. Their current quarterback, Dak Prescott, was drafted in the fourth round in 2016 but is now the highest-paid player in league history. Tom Brady was drafted even later than Shedeur Sanders, and he won seven Super Bowls and is considered by many to be the greatest quarterback of all time.

However, as today’s news illustrates, Deion’s advice is worth considering not just for athletes but for the rest of us as well.

Letter by Titanic survivor sells for record price

A letter written by a Titanic survivor has sold at auction for nearly $400,000.

When first-class passenger Col. Archibald Gracie boarded the ship on April 10, 1912, he drafted a letter to a friend stating, “It is a fine ship, but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her.” Five days later, the “unsinkable” ship sank, killing some 1,500 of the vessel’s roughly 2,200 passengers.

Gracie survived the sinking by climbing onto an overturned collapsible lifeboat with around a dozen other men. He wrote later that around half the men who reached the lifeboat died from exhaustion or extreme cold. He died less than eight months later due to health issues exacerbated by hypothermia and physical injuries sustained from the shipwreck.

His letter sold Saturday in England for a record-breaking $399,000.

In other news, a thirty-year-old Vancouver resident is being charged with murder for killing at least eleven people in a car-ramming attack on a Filipino festival in that city. Interim Chief Constable Steve Rai told reporters Sunday, “This is the darkest day in our city’s history.” The death toll could rise, as two dozen people were injured, some critically.

The death toll from a huge explosion that rocked one of the main ports in Iran rose Monday to forty-six people killed. A fire is still burning at the Shahid Rajaei port near Bandar Abbas. Over a thousand people suffered injuries in the explosion. Authorities have still not offered an explanation for the blast.

I could go on, but the news every morning makes the same point: the future is unknown. 

This has always been true, of course, but this simple fact is more fearsome for many than ever. Experts cite this fear as a significant factor behind the precipitous drop in the US birth rate, for example. One expert said, “People really need to feel confident about the future. . . having kids is sort of an irreversible decision and it’s a long-term one.”

Why we’re afraid of tomorrow

What explains this epidemic of fear over the future?

One factor is the rise of challenges that threaten our future in unprecedented ways. Artificial Intelligence is seen by some as threatening the future not only of our jobs but even of our species. Fears over nuclear proliferation and war are rising as rogue states like North Korea obtain these cataclysmic weapons and autocrats like Vladimir Putin threaten to use them. Economic issues are now global in scale, as recent tariff news illustrates.

A second is the ubiquity of news, both via social media and on traditional platforms, making deaths on the other side of the world front-page stories on this side of the globe. We are more aware of tragedies than ever before. And since bad news generates news, such fear-invoking stories are more common than ever.

A third is the decline in religiosity across much of the West, giving secularized people less reason to be hopeful for a future they can neither predict nor control. When we face a challenge beyond our resources, we need to be able to trust in resources beyond ourselves.

And this leads me to my point today.

All of God there is, is in this moment

Deion Sanders’s focus on living in the “NOW” is both timely and biblical.

When Moses met God at the burning bush and asked his name, God replied, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). This translates YHWH, the most sacred Hebrew name for the Lord. It could be rendered, “the One who was, is, and ever shall be.”

God said of himself, “I the Lᴏʀᴅ do not change” (Malachi 3:6); “Lᴏʀᴅ” translates YHWH. Similarly, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). God can be timeless because he created the space-time continuum (Genesis 1:1) and transcends it. As Moses said of the “I Am” he met in the wilderness, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Psalm 90:2).

I have often quoted Helen Mallicoat’s timeless poem about God’s timeless nature:

All of God there is, is in this moment.

God can help us only with what exists. He cannot help us defeat Martians because they’re not real. If we choose to live in the past or the future, we’re on our own. But if we determine to live in the present, we find God’s providence and power ready to help us experience him in all his fullness.

Oswald Chambers assured us, “Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, he packs our lives with surprises all the time. . . . when we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.”

The psalmist testified, “The Lᴏʀᴅ is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Psalm 118:6). As a result, he could famously declare,

“This is the day that the Lᴏʀᴅ has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (v. 24).

The old aphorism is still true: No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.