This week I’m sharing a post each day about five books I read this summer. Today’s book: “The Junction Boys – How Ten Days in Hell with Bear Bryant Forged a Championship Team” by Jim Dent.

Bear Bryant, the legendary football coach at Alabama, had earlier coaching stints at Maryland, Kentucky and Texas A&M. This book covers his first year at Texas A&M and the team’s preseason training camp in the small town of Junction, which was in the midst of a seven year drought. The practices were brutal beyond justification and players were not allowed water breaks. Bryant’s efforts to forge toughness and chase off quitters worked. The team started camp with 115 players and finished with 35. Of those only 24 would be able to play in the first game. Heatstrokes and broken bones had taken a toll.

Many of the players, including a few who survived the camp, resented Bryant for years to come. Bryant himself lived with regrets at his actions. Guilt had haunted him and he often relived the day that a player named Billy Schroeder almost died.

Yet most of the survivors loved him. Many of them went on to very successful careers and credited Bryant for the lessons they learned in Junction. They called him the most influential person in their life.

That team finished the season with a losing record, having won only one game. It was Bryant’s only losing season as a coach. But it laid the foundation for tough teams in the years to come that would win big. Bryant often said his favorite team was that 1-9 Aggie team.

Twenty-five years later a reunion of the players who survived the camp was held at Junction. It was 1979 and Bryant had just won his fifth national championship at Alabama. Two of the camp survivors refused to attend. Each of the players told how the experience at Junction had affected their lives. Then they presented Bryant a commemorative ring honoring the Junction Boys and that 1-9 Aggie team. Bryant wiped a tear from his cheek.

Less than four years later, Bear Bryant died as the winningest coach in college football history. He had also led Alabama to a sixth national championship. When he died he was wearing one piece of jewelry…the ring given to him by the Junction Boys.

Much of what Bear Bryant did in 1954 was wrong. Yet a lot of good did come from it, especially for some of the players who survived the camp.

Life can be hard. Wrong choices are made. Things are not always fair. We suffer because of what other people do. We all know this about life. Yet followers of Christ have a beautiful promise from God: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). It doesn’t say that God causes everything or that everything that happens is good. What it does say is that God works in our lives if we love Him to bring some good from all the bad things that happen to us. The bad stuff still hurts. But our God blesses us in the midst of it. I can’t imagine facing the hard moments in life without that promise…or without our God.

Pastor Steve Hogg