Some prayers just happen; they are “the cry of the heart.” No training needed when it comes to this kind of prayer. I’ve uttered it thousands of times. Bet you have, too.Like when the phone rings and the bad news starts to spill and all you can do is say, Father...Father...Father, your heart crying out to God. It’s a good kind of prayer, rising from the deep places in us, often unbidden, always welcome to his loving ears. But I think most folks get stuck there, which is kind of like ending your education somewhere around fourth grade. There is more. 

When I met Kevin, I was six months into a year of volunteering in Philadelphia. The year was about “incarnational living,” a term that was often interpreted to mean “being the hands and feet of Jesus to the people in our neighborhood.” When I met Kevin, I was six months into a year of volunteering in Philadelphia. The year was about “incarnational living,” a term that was often interpreted to mean “being the hands and feet of Jesus to the people in our neighborhood.” I lived with five other young women, sharing meals to make our food budget of $17 per person, per week, stretch a little further.

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.

Well, it’s finally summer. With that comes gloriously long days, board shorts that don’t fit quite right after a winter of hearty meals, and the call of water. Here in Minnesota, we’ve got lakes galore (way more than 10,000), but at the moment, I’m missing the tide. There’s something about the ocean. Something about salty air and the endless horizon that has hooked men for thousands of years—it pulls us out into deep water to hunt for food, explore new lands, and test ourselves in an environment quite indifferent to our fate. Water so often symbolizes life. The ocean has the vastness of God about it.

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?

Jesus is a notorious straight-shooter. It seems, though, that not all the language God employs is so self-evident. By way of example, consider the end of creation, where God looks at what he has done and says, “Good,” like creation was a functioning faucet.

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 intentionally brief podcast is about a shift—from reacting to responding. The world downplays prayer as a legitimate response to global events. But prayer is a mighty power we've been given to co-determine the future with God, and to compete for the many uncertain outcomes of this global moment. So now more than ever, let's pause, and respond, and pray.

Introducing the And Sons Sur-Thrive-al Coffee Collaboration. If you're going to drink coffee, drink great coffee, and while you're at it, help the helpers. Find out how we're partnering with a couple of our favorite coffee roasters to sustain independent coffee businesses and support COVID-19 relief efforts.

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.

We’d always wanted to build a mountain bike from the frame up. So when three frames and several boxes of parts started arriving, we couldn’t help but get pretty excited. 

Alex Burton is both friend and coworker and was telling us stories from a backcountry ski trip he took last year through the mountains of Colorado. He was in the midst of prepping for another trip this year when we knew we had to grab him and hear some more about this story.

Something I like about wild pigs: The first hogs to run wild in America escaped from Hernando de Soto’s expedition, something it’s hard to blame them for doing. They flourished in the swamps and—like most animals living in swamps—kept to themselves. Five hundred years went by.

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.”