If you want to nourish your soul, adopt simple, real practices and do them. I love cutting firewood. The tools are straightforward and the motions are simple. Most guys can split a block without hurting themselves. And there’s still plenty to know because, like learning to kiss or throw a punch, you’ve got to get the basics down or you’ll get yourself in trouble.

How do we interpret circumstances like “open” and “closed” doors? What do they really mean? Because as we are pointing out, simply the open or closed may mean any number of things. Circumstances are simply not enough to tell you what is right. Which brings us to this: How do I interpret what is going on in my life? I’d call that a $6 million question.

We’re living in a stressful time where the people and systems we trusted to save us are being shaken and many of us are wondering what, exactly, we’re supposed to do. How do you fix humanity? How do you change the human heart? How do you change the world? The answer may surprise you. At least, it’s surprised saints throughout the ages. Love Jesus. Fall in love with him again. Let him seed a change in your heart that will indeed transform the world.

I mean, really. Sometimes I think our digital environments are an experiment—designed by a misanthropic robot—sprung on the West to see how much hatred people will communicate before they give up and sign off. Online, you are not a person. Consider, for example, your Facebook feed. When people talk there, what are they concerned about?

Having survived Y2K and come of age during the peak of the Left Behind series’ popularity, I am familiar with end-times musings. With these fictions and the very real advent of global warming and nuclear proliferation, our generation has never been far from the apocalypse. So yeah, I’ve thought about the end times. I’ve let my mind wander through some emergency scenarios, the same way I’ve pondered how to escape quicksand (lay back and float until you can grab a branch) or kill zombies (headshot, idiots). And yet, the Bible is not so glib.

For years my wife and I were terrified of the prospect of pregnancy. It felt like the death knell of all our dreams. If we got pregnant, how would we travel to Japan? When would we get scuba certified and dive the great reefs of the world? Would we have to give up all those nights with a bottle of wine split between us, those early morning ascents of Colorado 14ers, our sleep in general?

I’d come to the mountains to restore my soul. It wasn’t working, though God was doing his everyday thing and filling the world with riches. As I spent some time thinking about why it wasn’t working, I came back around to an inescapable discipline, one of the ways God shows a person he loves them: fasting.

I’ve been tending to my inner 8-year-old recently. The holiday season brings him to the surface year after year, but for the most part I ignore him or push him down under a blanket of distraction, sugar, and alcohol. He gets me into trouble and makes me feel vulnerable and stupid, so I’d prefer if he not be so vocal. Beer is great for shutting his voice down. For a while.

This is an opportunity. You can do more than survive. You can do more than wash your hands. You can offer life, generosity, and hope to a world shaking with fear. You can do this in a hundred ways if you’ll accept the call to action. Stop retreating. Turn around. Walk toward the darkness. View this as your moment.

Boredom shifts and nestles into the corners of the airport, accumulating like flies in the summer heat. My eyes glide and wander over the monotone steel blues to kill the time. They stop and catch.

I think a lion came through last night. Our horses are really amped up this morning, racing back and forth across their paddock, necks arched, tails high, snorting. Something put them on high alert.

By the time we hit adulthood, we’ve probably heard a truckload about following our dreams and “finding God’s will for our lives.” The theme gets rehashed in every graduation speech. It’s been a staple of Oprah for years.

It’s the end of a long day, and you need something. You need junk food. You need to jerk off. You need a joint. You need nachos, Netflix, a bottle of whiskey. You need.

Dan Allender is known to many as an author, psychologist, and founder of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. We know him as a cigar-loving fly fishing partner and as an early friend of And Sons. We don’t know a more playful, brilliant or beautifully odd man. An hour-long conversation with him is like talking to G.K. Chesterton or maybe even Jesus.

Last week I was on my couch watching YouTube when the Verdict found me again. The comedian, a young woman, opens her standup routine by saying how terrible it is to be a straight woman in 2019. In her words, to love men is like going to a restaurant that keeps giving you food poisoning. “Turns out, boys, you’re no good. You’re no good.”