Kurt Warner is on a mission from God.

2009 will be a significant year for many reasons. The world and the country face several daunting environmental and economic challenges. But 2009 holds another significance that may be overlooked. It marks the ten year anniversary of an event that came on so quickly...and then seemingly vanished just as hurriedly only a few years later.

In the NFL preseason of 1999, St. Louis Rams quarterback Trent Green suffered a season-injury. Such was life for NFL fans in St. Louis. The Cardinals left town and then the crappy L.A. Rams brought their show to town and promptly took to losing easily. As a burly 28 year-old Arena Football League veteran and former grocery store shelf-stocker name Kurt lumbered out onto the field to take Green's place, nobody really noticed. Even most Rams season-ticket holders probably didn't think to much of the fact that the season would be lost before a game is even played.

But what happened next for the Rams and the deeply religious Kurt Warner (he wears 13 to show that no superstition is more powerful than God) should be nothing considered short of a miracle: The St. Louis Rams became the best team in football. Guys like the name of Favre and Manning and Young could do nothing but stand by as Warner and his loaded offense put up unheard of numbers.

For three consecutive years the Rams started 6-0 and were routinely the team to beat. Injuries to his hand would cost him some time, but when healthy he had the uncanny ability to make throws that almost seemed like he was dropping the ball to receiver 40 yards down field.

The amazing run for Warner and the Rams ended after the 2001 Super Bowl when an equally miraculous QB by the name of Brady and the New England Patriots upset the Rams with a game-winning field goal as time expired.

Warner was never the same. His hand injuries made him turnover-prone and his ball speed declined dramatically. When the dust had finally settled, though, Warner had two NFL MVPs and one Super Bowls MVPs and he and the Rams had shred the offensive record brooks.

For those of us who saw him tear through the NFL in 1999, his quick fade in 2002 and subsequent years was perplexing. Maybe teams just figured him out, maybe he got slow...sometimes an NFLers prime is brief if for no other reason than the pressure and beating they subject themselves to every weekend.

But now Warner, ten years older and as unwaveringly faithful as ever, has worked another Super Bowl back to the Super Bowl. He has taken a 9-7 Arizona Cardinals team (that's right, the Cardinals team that left St. Louis in '88) from playoff afterthought to the final two.

It is not like Warner has had to carry this team, much like he didn't have to carry those Rams teams with talent at every skill position...Larry Fitzgerald and Isaac Bruce, Boldin and Torry Holt, Steve Breaston and Az Hakim, Edge James and Marshall Faulk. Is Warner as good as the numbers he put up in St. Louis show or has he just been blessed with some of the best talent around him ever seen in the game, twice? Is it just coincidence? Or is it something...a little more...higher up?