The Best Local Dish I’ve Had While Traveling

Posted on August 10, 2026 by Douglas Blaine
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?
View all responses

Apparently, the people who write the WordPress Daily Prompts think I travel like Anthony Bourdain.

They seem to imagine me wandering through tiny villages in Tuscany, sampling something cooked by an 87-year-old grandmother from a recipe that has been handed down for six generations. Then I’d move on to Thailand for street food, spend a weekend eating my way through New Orleans and finish things off at some little seaside restaurant in Greece that only the locals know about.

My actual travel history is considerably less impressive.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t eaten well while traveling. I’ve had some very good Italian food in Little Italy. I’ve eaten some terrific seafood in Savannah. There are probably a few other meals hiding somewhere in my memory that would make a strong case if I spent enough time thinking about them.

But if we’re talking about a meal that really felt connected to the place where I was eating it, I think I’d have to cross the border into Mexico.

Years ago, I had steak Tampiqueña at Arturo’s in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico, and that one still sticks with me.

Nuevo Progreso itself wasn’t exactly a picturesque little Mexican village where you’d want to spend the evening strolling beneath the stars. It was a pretty rough little border town. Sometimes it would rain and the streets would flood almost instantly. There was plenty of activity during the day, but it wasn’t the kind of place where I ever thought, “You know what would be nice? A relaxing nighttime walk.”

And then there was Arturo’s.

Walking inside was almost like stepping into a different town.

In the middle of all those messy surroundings was this restaurant with an air of class about it. It felt like a place where you were going to get a very good meal before anybody even brought the food to the table.

And then they brought the Tampiqueña.

The dish is centered around a strip of tenderloin, but that’s just the beginning. It comes with a cheese enchilada, Mexican rice, beans and guacamole, which means you’re not really ordering steak with a couple of sides. You’re getting a pretty good sampling of Mexican food surrounding a steak.

And it was terrific.

I’m sure the setting had something to do with how much I remember it. There was something about crossing the border, walking through Nuevo Progreso and then sitting down in that restaurant that made the meal feel like part of the trip rather than just someplace we stopped to eat.

A couple of years ago, when we returned to the Rio Grande Valley for my aunt’s funeral, we went to the Arturo’s in Weslaco, Texas.

The Weslaco restaurant didn’t quite have the same atmosphere I remembered from the one across the border. It wasn’t bad. It just didn’t have that same strange little touch of elegance that made the Nuevo Progreso restaurant stand out so much from everything around it.

But the food?

That was exactly what I remembered.

I ordered the Tampiqueña again, and all those years later, it was still every bit as good.

Maybe that’s the real test of a memorable meal. Sometimes you remember food as being better than it actually was because you’ve mixed it together with the vacation, the people you were with and everything else that happened around it.

But every once in a while, you get the chance to go back and try it again.

And the steak Tampiqueña passed the test.

So no, I haven’t eaten my way through Tuscany, Thailand or the Greek islands.

But I did cross the border into Mexico once and find one outstanding steak in a restaurant that seemed completely out of place with the town surrounding it.

I’ll take it.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt

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Quick Thought – Monday, August 10, 2026: God’s Hand on America—Romans 13 and the American Revolution

Posted on August 10, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

Read

Romans 13:1-7

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
R0mans 13:1

Reflect

Today’s Scripture creates an interesting problem when we think about the founding of the United States.

Paul says that governing authorities have been instituted by God and that Christians are to be subject to them. So what are we supposed to make of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers, who eventually rebelled against British rule?

There’s no getting around the fact that they did rebel. They declared their independence from Great Britain, formed their own government and fought a war to defend it.

But that decision didn’t come overnight.

For years, the colonists petitioned, protested and sought relief from the British government. Instead of resolving the growing conflict, tensions continued to increase through taxation, punitive laws and eventually bloodshed. The conflict had already turned deadly in incidents such as the Boston Massacre, when British soldiers fired into a hostile crowd and killed five colonists.

By the time the Declaration of Independence was written, the colonists believed British rule had become destructive of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that government was supposed to protect. They weren’t rejecting the idea of government. They believed they needed a government that would fairly represent the people it governed.

That still leaves us with Romans 13.

Paul clearly teaches that government has legitimate authority, and Christians shouldn’t treat obedience as optional simply because they disagree with those in charge. But Scripture also makes clear that no earthly government has absolute authority. When Peter and the apostles were ordered to stop preaching about Jesus, they answered, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Government is under God. It is not God.

That means Christians should approach resistance to authority very carefully. We aren’t free to ignore laws simply because we don’t like them, and political disagreement doesn’t automatically justify rebellion. But our ultimate allegiance belongs to the Lord, and every human government is ultimately accountable to Him.

Two hundred fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, the United States is still here. We certainly have our share of problems, and our history includes both remarkable achievements and grievous failures. Still, I believe God’s providence can be seen throughout the history of this country.

Many of the founders spoke openly about Providence and understood that a nation could not survive on laws alone. Character, virtue and a recognition that human authority is accountable to something higher than itself mattered.

Romans 13 also reminds us that our responsibility doesn’t end with deciding whether our leaders are good or bad. Christians are called to obey lawful authority, pay what we owe, show respect and remember that even when we disagree strongly with those who govern us, they remain people made in the image of God.

So today, give thanks to the Lord for the freedoms and blessings we enjoy in this country. Pray for those who lead it, whether you voted for them or not. Pray for wisdom, justice and humility.

And most of all, pray that the hearts of the American people—including our own—will turn toward Him.

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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

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The Sunday Pour: The Barrel That Stayed Put

Posted on August 9, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

Not every barrel gets to travel.

At some distilleries, barrels are moved around the rickhouse during aging. A barrel that spends time high in the warehouse, where summer temperatures can become brutal, may later be moved somewhere cooler. The idea is to balance the effects of heat and location as the whiskey matures. But that isn’t how every distillery does it.

Plenty of barrels are rolled into a rickhouse, placed in a particular spot and left there for years. They endure whatever comes with that location — the heat, the cold and the changing seasons. The wood expands and contracts, the whiskey moves in and out of the barrel, and slowly something develops that could not have developed anywhere else. The barrel doesn’t go anywhere, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

I think we sometimes have trouble understanding that.

We tend to notice people who move. Someone leaves home to chase a dream, takes a new job in another city, heads overseas as a missionary, steps into a new ministry, starts a business or walks through a door God has suddenly opened. Those stories are exciting. We celebrate them, and we should.

But somebody usually stays. The missionary has people back home praying and giving. The child who ventures into adulthood often has a family that remains a steady place to return to. A church sends people into the community because other people keep showing up Sunday after Sunday to teach, sing, serve, clean, pray and do a hundred things nobody notices.

And every year, students leave classrooms and move on to the next grade, the next school and eventually the rest of their lives. The teacher stays, and another group walks through the door.

There are times when God absolutely calls us to move. Abraham left home without knowing exactly where God was taking him. The disciples dropped their nets and followed Jesus. Paul traveled thousands of miles carrying the Gospel into places where it had never been preached. But movement isn’t the only evidence that God is working. Sometimes faithfulness looks a lot like staying put.

After Jesus healed a man who had been possessed by demons, the man begged to go with Him. You would think Jesus would have welcomed another disciple into the traveling party. Instead, He told him, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you” (Luke 8:39).

His assignment wasn’t somewhere else. It was right where he was.

There are seasons when we look at other people moving forward and wonder whether we’re being left behind. They have the new opportunity, the new adventure, the promotion, the ministry or the fresh start. Meanwhile, we’re still in the same church, the same job, the same house, carrying many of the same responsibilities. We’re still in the same place in the rickhouse.

But staying in one place doesn’t mean God has forgotten where He put you. A barrel resting quietly on a rack is still changing. Heat and cold are doing their work. Time is doing its work. The oak is doing its work. And God can do some remarkable work in people who are willing to remain where He has placed them.

Maybe somebody else can move because you stayed. Maybe somebody else can take the risk because you remained dependable, or walk through the door because you were there to hold it open. And maybe the work God is doing in you requires something our restless culture doesn’t particularly value: time.

There will always be stories about people who went somewhere. There should also be stories about the ones who stayed, because sometimes staying isn’t what happens when you fail to move. Sometimes staying is the calling.

And the barrel that stayed put may discover that it was exactly where the Master Distiller wanted it all along.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

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Teach Them How to Think: What Schools Should Really Teach

Posted on August 9, 2026 by Douglas Blaine
Daily writing prompt
What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
View all responses

Schools teach a lot of things, and despite what students sometimes think, most of them have a reason for being there. We teach kids how to calculate the slope of a line, identify the theme of a short story, label the parts of a cell and explain the causes of the War of 1812. Some of those things they will use again after graduation. Some of them they probably won’t. I’m still waiting for the day when somebody at the grocery store stops me and says, “Quick, DeBolt, we need the quadratic formula.”

But if I could add one thing to what schools teach, it wouldn’t be another subject. I’d like us to spend more time teaching students how to think.

Notice I didn’t say what to think.

That’s an important distinction, particularly now. Students have access to more information than any generation before them, but access to information isn’t the same thing as knowing what to do with it. They can pull out a phone and get an answer to almost any question in seconds. The harder part is figuring out whether the answer is true, whether the source is reliable and whether somebody is trying to inform them or manipulate them.

That’s where I think schools have an increasingly important job.

Students need to learn to look at a claim and ask where it came from. They need to know the difference between evidence and opinion, and they need to understand that confidence isn’t proof. A person can be absolutely certain and still be absolutely wrong. A headline can be technically accurate while leaving out enough information to create a completely false impression. A thirty-second video can show exactly what happened while still failing to show what happened.

And, yes, artificial intelligence can produce an exceptionally convincing answer that turns out to be nonsense.

I’ve heard rumors.

Critical thinking also requires something that may be even harder to teach: the willingness to discover that you’re wrong.

We’ve gotten remarkably bad at that. Somewhere along the way, changing your mind became a sign of weakness. Once we’ve taken a position, especially if we’ve announced it publicly, we often feel obligated to defend it no matter what evidence comes along afterward. Instead of asking whether new information should change our thinking, we start looking for ways to defeat the new information.

I’d rather teach students that changing your mind because you’ve learned something isn’t losing an argument. It’s learning.

The same is true of disagreement. We teach students how to support an argument with evidence, which is important, but I wish we spent just as much time teaching them how to listen to somebody else’s argument. Listening isn’t simply remaining quiet until the other person finally stops talking and you can unleash everything you’ve been rehearsing in your head. It means trying to understand what the other person actually means before deciding why they’re wrong.

Students need to know that they can disagree with somebody without deciding that person is stupid, evil or beneath contempt. They also need to learn that two sentences can save an enormous amount of trouble in life: “I misunderstood you” and “I was wrong.”

Neither one appears very often on standardized tests.

Eventually, students are going to forget a tremendous amount of what we teach them. That’s not an indictment of schools; that’s simply how memory works. They may forget the dates of battles, the names of literary devices and whatever exactly the Golgi apparatus was doing in that diagram they studied the night before the biology test.

But they’re going to spend the rest of their lives deciding what to believe.

They’ll choose careers, sign contracts, borrow money, vote, build relationships, raise children and encounter thousands of people trying to persuade them of something. They’ll hear good arguments and terrible ones. They’ll be misled. They’ll misunderstand people. They’ll discover that some things they were certain about at 18 don’t look nearly as certain at 38 or 58.

We can’t possibly teach students everything they’ll need to know for the rest of their lives.

But we can teach them how to ask good questions, examine evidence, listen carefully and admit when they’ve gotten something wrong.

If they leave school knowing how to do that, we’ve taught them something they’ll actually use.

Even if nobody ever asks them to calculate the slope of a line again.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

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Quick Thought – Sunday, August 9, 2026: Do What’s Right

Posted on August 9, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

Read

Romans 14:13-23

Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
Romans 14:13

Reflect

Frank and Joe were trick-or-treating on Halloween when they came upon a table in front of a house. There was no one at the table, which was covered with wrapped candy bars.

Frank started picking up handfuls of candy bars and putting them in his bag. Joe stayed back and said to his friend, “Frank, shouldn’t we leave some for the other kids?”

“No one’s looking,” Frank responded. “Plus, what’ll they do if they catch us? It’s not like it’s against the law.”

Joe edged forward. He didn’t like the idea of doing something he felt was stealing. But Frank had a point. There wasn’t a sign telling them how many pieces they could take, and nobody was there to stop them. After a short wait, he picked up a couple of handfuls and stuffed them in his sack.

Did Frank sin? Did Joe?

Probably both, although for somewhat different reasons.

Frank may not have broken a written rule, but he knew the candy had been left for all of the children who came by, not for one child to take as much as he wanted. His greed was wrong. But he made matters worse by encouraging Joe to do something Joe sincerely believed was wrong.

Joe also sinned. He believed in his heart that taking the candy that way was stealing, but he went ahead and did it anyway. His conscience was telling him not to do it, and he ignored it.

That’s an important part of what Paul is teaching in today’s scripture.

In Paul’s day, Christians disagreed about whether certain foods were acceptable to eat. Some believers, particularly those who had grown up carefully observing Jewish dietary laws, still believed that certain foods were unclean. Other Christians understood that no food was inherently unclean.

Paul said they shouldn’t judge each other over those differences. But he also warned Christians not to use their freedom in a way that pressured someone else to violate his conscience.

That doesn’t mean our conscience is always right. We can misunderstand things, and our convictions need to be shaped by God’s truth. But if we sincerely believe something is wrong and do it anyway, we’re deliberately choosing to go against what we believe God wants us to do.

And we’re also responsible for the influence we have on other people.

As Christians, it’s not enough to ask whether we’re personally free to do something. We should also ask whether our example or encouragement might pressure someone else to do something they sincerely believe is wrong.

Today, pay special attention to your actions and think about the impact they have on other people. Pray that the Lord will help you choose what is right and encourage others to do the same, rather than becoming a stumbling block that leads either of you toward sin.

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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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The Story Between the Lines: The Woman at the Bank

Posted on August 8, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

She was 15 years old when her father came home drunk and carrying a gun. Violence was nothing new in the house. Her father had been drinking heavily for years, and when he drank, he could become frightening and unpredictable. But this night was worse.

She and her mother retreated to a bedroom and pushed themselves against the door, trying to keep him out. Then he fired through it. The bullets missed them, but the threat was no longer something that could be ignored. Her mother got a gun of her own and fired back.

Her father died.

Authorities investigated and determined that her mother had acted in self-defense. No charges were filed. For a teenage girl already growing up in a difficult home, it was the kind of experience that could have defined the rest of her life.

Instead, she left.

She was tall, striking and determined to build something better for herself. Modeling provided one possible escape, and before long she was traveling and working professionally. But modeling wasn’t really the dream. Dancing was.

She wanted to become a professional ballet dancer and trained seriously enough to believe she might make a career of it. Then her knees gave out, and the dream disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.

So she headed west.

She arrived in Los Angeles young, broke and with no real connections in the movie business. She stayed in a cheap hotel and lived largely on money her mother sent from home. One day, her mother mailed her a check, and she needed the money badly.

There was just one problem: the bank wouldn’t cash it.

Maybe another person would have quietly accepted the decision and walked away. She didn’t. She argued, pleaded and got angry, making enough of a scene that everyone nearby knew something was happening.

The teller saw a frustrated young woman who wanted her money. But the man standing behind her in line saw something else.

He saw a performance.

Not an act. Nothing about her frustration was fake. But he noticed the way she carried herself — the emotion, the intensity, the presence. Something about the young woman arguing with the teller made him think she might belong in front of a camera.

His name was John Crosby, and he was a talent manager. He helped her with the check, handed her his business card and eventually helped introduce her to the world of acting.

It was an unlikely beginning. Her first important Hollywood performance hadn’t taken place on a movie set. It had taken place in a bank, and she hadn’t even known she was auditioning.

Within a few years, small roles became larger ones, and larger roles became leading roles. The struggling dancer who couldn’t get a check cashed became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actresses.

Then came a role that almost made her unrecognizable.

She gained weight, changed her appearance and disappeared into the character of a serial killer in an acclaimed biopic. Her performance in that role brought her international acclaim.

And there was one more part of the story that might seem surprising to you. As you read about this young woman’s tragic home life, you might have assumed she had grown up in a trailer park in a place like Oklahoma or Alabama. No, this young girl’s tragedy unfolded in a much different place — more than 8,000 miles away across an ocean in a suburb of Pretoria, South Africa, called Benoni.

You might have seen her as a futuristic rebel, a prominent cable news anchor, a seductive ancient goddess or even a serial killer — Aileen Wuornos, in the role that earned her an Academy Award. But now you’ve seen her as a desperate young woman pleading to have a check cashed at a bank. And you’ve seen her even earlier, cowering with her mother behind a door as her father fired a gun through it.

You’ve watched that young woman — who you know as Charlize Theron — voyage across an ocean and a continent to find her destiny, but you know she traveled much further than that to get where she is today.

Because now you’ve seen the story between the lines.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

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Her Royal Highness Is Resting

Posted on August 8, 2026 by Douglas Blaine
Daily writing prompt
Share a photo of your pet and tell us one thing that makes them uniquely them.
View all responses

Princess has never seen the paperwork for our house, but she is reasonably certain that her name appears on the mortgage.

She does not simply sit on the furniture. She occupies it. She chooses the best seat, gathers the softest blanket around herself and settles in as though the entire room was designed by a professional decorator who specializes in canine comfort.

The photograph above is a good example.

Princess could have stretched out anywhere on the couch, but that would have been far too ordinary. Instead, she arranged herself across the seat, rested her head against the arm and nestled into the furry blanket until she had created something resembling a luxury dog resort.

Then she fell asleep without the slightest concern that a human being might have intended to sit there.

That confidence is one of the things that makes Princess uniquely Princess. Her name is appropriate, although not because she is especially delicate or refined. She is called Princess because she assumes the world should rearrange itself for her convenience.

She has opinions about where she should sleep, when she should eat and how much attention she should receive. She can somehow take up considerably more space than her body should require. If she is comfortable, everyone else is expected to work around her.

But underneath all of that royal behavior is something much sweeter.

Princess is a rescue, and whatever uncertainty existed during the early part of her life is gone now. She sleeps deeply because she knows she is safe. She stretches across the furniture because she knows she belongs there. She has no concern that someone will make her leave, because this is her home and we are her people.

So yes, Princess may occasionally treat us like household staff.

But watching her sleep so peacefully makes it difficult to complain.

Her Royal Highness is resting, after all.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

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Quick Thought – Saturday, August 8, 2026: The Patience to Catch Fish

Posted on August 8, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

Read

Mark 1:15-20

And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
Mark 1:17

Reflect

When I was a little guy, my family used to take vacations at a small cabin in Ruidoso, New Mexico. One of the things we always looked forward to was trout fishing.

My dad would take my brother and me to a little trout farm that had several ponds, and we would each get a cane pole and a tiny cup of corn. He would bait our hooks with a piece of corn, and we would dip our lines into the water, where hundreds of hungry trout were waiting for dinner.

After maybe a minute, we would feel a tug on the line. If we lifted the pole at just the right time, we had trout for dinner. It was always a lot of fun, but fishing that way did not give us a very accurate picture of how difficult fishing usually is.

Real fishing requires patience and timing. You have to know where to look for the fish, and you have to be willing to wait until one takes the bait. Then you have to bring it in carefully without breaking the line. Fishing can be slow and frustrating, but it is rewarding when you finally catch one.

For the fishermen who followed Jesus, fishing was even harder. It involved casting and pulling in heavy nets, often after hours of exhausting work. They had to understand the water, the weather and the habits of the fish. Fishing was not a weekend hobby for them. It was their livelihood. Empty nets meant empty pockets and, possibly, empty stomachs.

Then Jesus approached these men who had spent their lives pursuing fish and offered them an entirely new purpose.

“Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

Notice that Jesus did not simply tell them to redirect the skills they already had. He said that he would make them become something new. They would bring their patience, perseverance and willingness to work, but Jesus would teach them how to see people, love people and lead them toward the Kingdom of God.

Their response was immediate. Simon and Andrew left their nets, and James and John left their boat and followed him. Following Jesus required an immediate decision, but helping others follow him would require years of patient faithfulness.

The same is true for us.

Those who follow Jesus are called to share the Gospel with others. Ours is not a faith that is meant to be held tightly to ourselves. We are expected to live in a way that points people toward Christ and to be ready to speak when the Lord gives us an opportunity.

That will probably not be as easy as lowering a piece of corn into a pond filled with hungry trout. Some people will not be interested. Others may have been hurt by a church or disappointed by someone who claimed to follow Jesus. Some may simply not be ready to hear what we want to share.

We cannot force anyone into faith, and it is not our job to pressure or outsmart them. Our responsibility is to love people, pray for them, share the truth when God opens the door and trust him with the results.

Sometimes that requires the courage to speak immediately. Other times it requires the patience to wait. But the effort is always worthwhile when even one person comes to know and follow Jesus.

This week, think of one person who may need to experience the love and truth of Christ. Pray for that person, and ask the Lord to give you both the opportunity and the wisdom to share your faith naturally.

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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

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Don’t Let the Ball Hit the Ground

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Douglas Blaine
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
View all responses

WordPress apparently believes good advice has a shelf life of about two months.

At the end of May, it asked me to name the most profound piece of advice I had ever received. I wrote about something my mother taught me years ago: Listen carefully, wait for an opening and speak only when I have something worth adding to the conversation.

I’m still working on that one.

Some days, I follow her advice beautifully. Other days, my mouth apparently decides it has been oppressed long enough and stages a rebellion. But this question is slightly different. It doesn’t ask for the most profound advice I’ve received. It asks for the best.

That gives me just enough room to avoid writing the same post again.

One of the best principles I have tried to follow is simple:

Don’t let the ball hit the ground.

I don’t remember who first put it that way. It may have come from a coach, a teacher, a boss or someone at a leadership seminar. It may also be one of those expressions I heard somewhere, adopted as my own and have been repeating so long that I now believe it was engraved on a stone tablet.

The idea is that when something needs to be done, somebody needs to step forward and do it.

If there is a problem, solve it. If someone needs help, help. If everybody is standing around staring at a responsibility as though it might become less responsible if ignored long enough, pick it up.

Don’t let the ball hit the ground.

That principle has shaped much of my life. In newspaper offices, classrooms, churches and other organizations, I have often been the person who noticed what needed to be done and tried to make sure it happened.

Sometimes that meant taking responsibility for something no one had officially assigned to me. Sometimes it meant learning a new skill because there wasn’t anyone else available to do the job. Sometimes it meant staying later, working harder or finding a way around a problem that had stopped everybody else.

I like being dependable. I like being the person others can count on. There is something satisfying about seeing a need, stepping into the gap and making sure the ball stays in the air.

There is also a problem. Eventually, people notice that you keep catching things. Then they start throwing more things in your direction. Some of them don’t even look first.

Before long, you’re juggling six responsibilities, somebody is rolling another one toward your feet, and a person across the room is saying, “Doug will take care of it.” Doug, meanwhile, is wondering when Doug became an entire department.

The advice is still good. We need people who are willing to take responsibility. Far too many things fall apart because everyone assumes someone else will handle them.

But somewhere along the way, I’ve had to add a second line:

Don’t let the ball hit the ground—but make sure it is actually your ball.

That part is harder for me. When I see something being neglected, my instinct is to step in. When someone is struggling, I want to help. When a job is not being done well, I begin thinking about how I would do it.

Sometimes that is service. Sometimes it is leadership. Sometimes it is pride wearing a volunteer badge. And sometimes the ball needs to hit the ground so the person who was supposed to catch it realizes that standing there with his hands in his pockets was not an effective strategy.

Not every problem is mine to solve. Not every burden is mine to carry. Not every silence is asking me to fill it, although that last one brings me dangerously close to my mother’s advice again.

The best advice often requires wisdom in its application. Be dependable, but don’t make everyone dependent on you. Help people, but don’t prevent them from learning to help themselves. Step forward when you are needed, but don’t assume you are always the person who is needed.

And by all means, don’t let the ball hit the ground. Unless it was thrown to somebody else. In that case, I’m trying to learn to keep my hands in my pockets.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.

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Quick Thought – Friday, August 7, 2026: Gospel According to John

Posted on August 7, 2026 by Douglas Blaine

Read

Philippians 4:4-13

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13

Reflect

I’ve always been a very big baseball fan. We lived near Philadelphia when I was a kid, and I latched on to the Phillies easily. The memory of watching Tug McGraw close out the 1980 World Series is still as clear as when I watched the final out in my parents’ bedroom.

As an adult, I lived for 20 years in Atlanta. During those years, it was impossible not to root for the Braves, even though I was still a Phillies fan—and even though the Phillies and Braves became divisional rivals. For several years, the Braves’ pitching rotation was among the finest ever assembled: Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Steve Avery.

Among those pitchers, Smoltz was always a particular favorite of mine, especially because of the way he continually adapted. He had been a dominant starting pitcher and won the National League Cy Young Award in 1996 as the league’s best pitcher. But Tommy John surgery on his elbow in 2000 cost him an entire season. When he returned in 2001, injuries continued to interfere with his comeback, so the Braves eventually moved him to the bullpen.

And he became one of baseball’s best relief pitchers.

Smoltz spent three seasons as Atlanta’s closer and set a National League record with 55 saves in 2002. Then, when he returned to the starting rotation in 2005, he once again became one of baseball’s best starting pitchers. His resilience in the face of injuries, changing roles and unexpected setbacks was a huge inspiration.

Smoltz’s faith made his story even more meaningful to me. In a 2005 article, he recalled asking Braves team chaplain Walt Wiley whether he could live any way he wanted until he was in his 40s and then accept Christ when he was ready.

Wiley told him, “Nothing prevents you from doing that—with the exception of one thing: You might not get to your target date.”

Smoltz realized that waiting until later in life was risky. So he didn’t wait. He accepted Christ then.

The testimonies of professional athletes like John Smoltz tend to receive a lot of attention. Their celebrity status certainly elevates them in many people’s eyes. But it is important to remember that they are still people just like you and me. They simply have to live out their faith in highly visible and often stressful circumstances.

Their visibility allows us to look at memorable moments in their lives and see how they handled success, pressure and disappointment.

In 1996, the same year Smoltz won the Cy Young Award, the Braves played the New York Yankees in the World Series. I was blessed that a friend gave me an extra ticket to Game 5.

Smoltz pitched that night, and he was amazing. He threw eight innings, struck out ten batters and allowed only one unearned run. Unfortunately, Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte was just a little better. He didn’t allow any runs, and the Yankees won 1-0. They went on to win the World Series. Smoltz had given one of the finest performances of his career, but even his best wasn’t enough to win.

In that 2005 interview, he said, “Someone might think my conversion is why I had my Cy Young season in 1996, but it’s not. However, it is why I was able to handle my Cy Young season.”

That distinction is important.

Paul wasn’t saying in Philippians 4:13 that Christians can accomplish anything they decide to attempt. He was explaining that Christ gave him the strength to remain faithful through every circumstance. Paul knew what it was like to have plenty, and he knew what it was like to have almost nothing. He had experienced both mountaintops and valleys, and Christ strengthened him through all of them.

Christians and non-Christians alike will reach life’s mountaintops—our Cy Young moments. We’ll also experience life’s valleys—our World Series Game 5 moments, when even our best isn’t good enough.

The question is whether we will face those moments alone and how we will handle both victory and defeat.

Christ does not promise that every great effort will result in victory. He does not promise that we will avoid injury, disappointment or unexpected changes. He promises to remain with us and give us the strength to be faithful through whatever life places before us.

With Christ, we can endure loss without being destroyed by it. We can experience success without being defined by it. We can face the familiar role or the one we never expected to fill.

The Lord will bring us all manner of opportunities to grow, and He wants us to experience them with Him—not struggle through them alone as though He were merely a spectator in the stands.

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Reflection copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt and Charles Fulton.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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