Josh Benner

Tag: boston

  • Worst to winners: St. Louis Blues win Stanley Cup

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    The Stanley Cup. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    It’s a better story than the Mighty Ducks.

    The St. Louis Blues won their first Stanley Cup in franchise history Wednesday night. The story of how they got there is an inspiring one.

    January 2 was an off day for the St. Louis Blues. It was also a significant day because it was on that day where they fell into last place in points in the NHL. It had already been a chaotic season. In November, the time fired head coach Mike Yeo. At that point, rising star goalie Jordan Binnington hadn’t even started an NHL game (and he wouldn’t get his first win until January 7).

    The Blues had a winning record for the month of January. But as the month ended, they were still far behind in the playoff standings and posted the third worst record in the Western Conference.

    In February, the Blues caught fire. From January 23-February 19, St. Louis won 11 straight games. They continued to rise in the standings and made their way into the playoffs, tied for the fourth most points in the Wester Conference.

    Once they made it to the playoffs, it wasn’t an easy journey. All four of their playoff series went at least six games. In every round but the first round, the other team had the home ice advantage. But last night, the Blues came out in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and dominated Boston.

    It’s a great story.

    To think on January 2 that St. Louis would win the Stanley Cup. It would have been laughable. The playoffs seemed like a far off dream.

    But there are some life lessons we can all learn from the Blues this season. It’s not where you start that matters. It’s how you respond and how you finish. Keep grinding, keep fighting, keep working hard and amazing things can happen.

    Just because you start working to improve doesn’t mean that it becomes easy along the way. The Blues had to battle the whole way.

    It’s always easy to settle for failure. It’s always easy to make excuses and justifications for why things can’t change or get better, of why YOU can’t change or get better. It’s always easy to think it’s too late, you’re too old, you didn’t have the right foundation, etc.

    Don’t make excuses. Just grind.

    Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think, and don’t forget to subscribe!

    Josh Benner has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has served churches in Minnesota and Illinois. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in St. Louis.

  • Life lessons from baseball

     

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    Tomorrow is opening day of the 2018 Major League Baseball season. Between opening day and the end of the season in early November, more than 2,430 games will be played.

    Baseball’s regular season is the longest in American professional sports, nearly doubling the 82 games NBA and NHL seasons.

    I think about the baseball games that are blowouts. The 10, 12, 14 run wins. When a team gets behind by a huge margin in baseball, it’s very rare for them to comeback and win. And the later in the game a team is down by a big run-differential, the less likely they are to comeback. If you get to the bottom of the 9th down by double-digit runs, the incidence of a comeback is virtually unheard of.

    In a baseball game, you can go out on Thursday, and your team can get crushed. Starting pitcher might not have good stuff bats aren’t connecting, errors. It can be a horrible day, a 12 run loss.

    But the beauty of baseball is that, no matter what happened on Thursday, Friday is a new opportunity to go out and to succeed. No matter how badly you lost yesterday, it doesn’t matter with how you can do today.

    Life is the same way. We can have a really bad day. We can feel totally defeated. But tomorrow is always a new day.

    That metaphor works both ways. If you were the team who dominated on Thursday, you still have to go out and play well on Friday.

    Josh Benner is the associate pastor at Cornerstone Evangelical Free Church in Fergus Falls, Minnesota and has a Master of Divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He enjoys writing about faith and culture. He lives with his wife Kari in Minnesota.

  • Boston Marathon bombing: one man’s response

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    Any event where innocent people lose their lives and that causes the rest of us to question our own safety in doing ordinary activities like viewing sporting events is a tragedy because it undermines the way in which we function as a society.

    I’m a pretty cynical person. And I’ve seen a lot of statuses in the wake of today’s tragedy in Boston talking about losing faith in humanity and asking what the world is coming to. Unfortunately, there will always be bad people. When we see people who go out and cause harm to others, I’m always heartened to see the great lengths people will go to to rush to the help of others, risk their own safety, and search for ways to be part of recovering. We’ve seen tremendous stories of heroism at Sandy Hook, in Aurora, at the World Trade Center, and we will always hear stories of people facing evil at whatever the cost in the shadow of tragedy to rush to the aid of those in need.

    I see the picture of a man on the ground with three police officers around him. To me, that image is a symbol of America’s response to today’s event. I feel that it capture the essence of our fellow citizens rushing to help a man who’s been knocked down while also rushing to action.

    Like so many people across America and throughout the world, I join in praying for the victims and for their families.

    jrb