**Author:** [[3. Resources/Authors/John Pavlovitz|John Pavlovitz]] # Book Overview ![[Rise Visual.excalidraw]] ## About the Author John Pavlovitz is a pastor, activist, and bestselling author based in Wake Forest, North Carolina. He's spent 20+ years in local church ministry and runs a widely-read blog called *Stuff That Needs to Be Said*. His other books include *LOW: An Honest Advent Devotional*, *If God is Love, Don't Be a Jerk*, *A Bigger Table*, and *Hope and Other Superpowers*. Pavlovitz positions himself squarely in the progressive Christian space -- committed to equality, diversity, and justice, and openly critical of conservative evangelicalism. His writing voice is confessional and personal, drawing heavily on his own struggles with depression, anxiety, and doubt. He doesn't write from the pulpit so much as from the therapist's couch. ## Central Thesis Pain isn't premeditated by God, but it is an opportunity to choose who we'll become. Pavlovitz rejects the idea that suffering has a built-in purpose ("everything happens for a reason"), and instead frames the Lenten journey as a messy, non-linear path where the falling and the getting back up are both sacred. The "rise" isn't a single Easter morning moment -- it's the accumulated weight of 40+ days of choosing hope in the dark, staying curious when certainty fails, and extending love when it's inconvenient. Faith, in this framework, isn't about having answers. It's about staying in the questions long enough that something useful emerges. ## Why This Book Matters This devotional fills a specific gap: Lenten material for people who aren't sure they believe anymore but haven't quite left, either. Most devotionals assume a baseline of doctrinal certainty. Pavlovitz assumes doubt, depression, political exhaustion, and relational fracture. He's writing for the person who's lost friends over politics, who's grieving a parent they didn't get back from the grave, who's scrolling their phone instead of being present, and who feels guilty about all of it. That audience is large, growing, and underserved by traditional devotional literature. The book also matters as a document of pandemic-era faith. Several entries reference COVID isolation, the loss of physical touch, and the particular strain of being a progressive Christian in a polarized political landscape. It captures a specific moment in American Christianity. --- # Chapter Summaries Since this is a 46-entry daily devotional, I'm grouping entries thematically rather than day-by-day. ## Week 1: Framing the Journey (Days 1-7) Pavlovitz opens by spoiling the ending -- Day 1 starts with the empty tomb from Matthew 28 rather than the beginning of Lent. This is deliberate: he wants readers to hold the resurrection in view while walking through the darkness. The windshield/rearview mirror metaphor establishes his core approach -- current suffering feels permanent but will eventually be behind you. Days 2-7 cycle through solitude ("A Holy Unavailability"), resentment, chronic pain, patience ("Love Remains" and the repeated use of the word "remain"), the inner voice of self-condemnation ("The Voice We Listen To"), and the cost of following conviction ("The Leaving"). The strongest entry here is Day 6, where Pavlovitz discloses his three-decade battle with depression and reframes the wilderness temptation as the daily fight to listen to the voice that gives life rather than the one that condemns. ## Weeks 2-3: Doubt, Grief, and the Struggle to Believe (Days 8-16) This stretch is the emotional core of the book. Pavlovitz tackles "Doubting Thomas" by reframing Thomas not as faithless but as someone who needed tangible evidence -- and noting that Jesus didn't scold him for it. Day 12 ("Death Stinks") is the book's rawest entry: Pavlovitz writes about his father's death and his jealousy of the Lazarus story. He wanted his father to walk out of the cemetery too, and he's honest about the anger that comes from not getting that miracle. Day 14 contains Pavlovitz's favorite five words attributed to Jesus -- "She did what she could" -- applied to the self-doubt of parenting and relationships. Day 16 ("The Forty-First Day") introduces the idea that wilderness seasons don't come with expiration dates, and the lie of depression is that the terrible present is permanent. ## Weeks 3-4: Presence, Play, and Being Seen (Days 17-24) The devotional shifts toward how we show up for others and for our own lives. Day 17 introduces "fears and false stories" as a framework for conflict -- people's positions are usually driven by fear, and many fears are based on inaccurate narratives. Day 18 reflects on the loss of physical touch during the pandemic through the lens of Jesus healing the leper. Day 20 ("Invitation to Play") reframes faith as curiosity rather than certainty: "You must be this curious to enter." Day 23 ("The Un-Missed Life") is a beach story about leaving his phone behind and being fully present. Day 24 is an honest account of a friend who abandoned faith entirely and seemed happier for it, and Pavlovitz's own wrestling with whether faith is worth the cost. ## Weeks 5-6: Community, Enemies, and the Hard Work of Love (Days 25-38) This is where the book gets politically charged. Day 25 connects the Matthew 25 "least of these" passage to a story about helping a man in a wheelchair during a rainstorm -- framing the spiritual journey as being about availability, not ability. Day 27 warns against "outrage addiction" -- becoming so conditioned to fighting that you can't stop even when the battle is over. Day 29 connects the parable of bigger barns to our relationship with time and people, not just possessions. Days 32-33 pair community (being "carried people" when depression overwhelms you) with radical generosity (inviting those who can't repay you). Day 35 is an honest account of sharing a meal with Judas as a challenge to our habit of deleting people from the guest list. Day 38 is the book's most self-critical entry: Pavlovitz confesses that he preaches enemy-love but doesn't actually want to practice it, especially toward people whose politics he finds repulsive. ## Final Days: Suffering, Mystery, and the Rise (Days 39-46) The book closes with entries about weathering storms you can't control, walking the narrow road without a map, and the Gethsemane prayer as a model for honest suffering. Day 41 takes direct aim at "everything happens for a reason" theology -- Pavlovitz prefers understanding God as one who bleeds alongside us rather than one who orchestrates our pain. Day 43 ("Woe Is Me") is a self-aware confession that progressive Christians can be just as self-righteous as the conservative ones they criticize. The final entry returns to Matthew 28 and the women leaving the tomb "afraid yet filled with joy" -- which Pavlovitz identifies as the honest spiritual condition: triumph held alongside unresolved mystery. --- # Key Takeaways ## Takeaways 1. Pain isn't a test with a hidden purpose. It's a space where you choose who you'll become. Pavlovitz rejects "everything happens for a reason" in favor of meaning found through response, not through suffering itself. 2. Doubt isn't a character flaw -- it's the default condition for honest faith. Pavlovitz returns to this repeatedly: Thomas wasn't faithless, he was evidence-based. Jesus accommodated that rather than condemning it. 3. Depression lies about permanence. The recurring metaphor of the "forty-first day" -- the day after the wilderness testing ends -- pushes back against the narrative that current pain is the new normal. 4. Presence is a spiritual discipline. Multiple entries (Days 2, 13, 23, 36) argue that being fully where you are, with whoever is in front of you, is the most faith-affirming thing you can do. 5. Progressive Christians aren't exempt from self-righteousness. Pavlovitz is at his best when he turns the lens on himself -- admitting he doesn't actually want to love his enemies, that he cheers when Jesus scolds Pharisees, and that outgrowing old theology doesn't mean outgrowing old hubris. --- # Notable Quotes > "I don't believe our suffering is a premeditated test that forces us to find meaning, but I believe that pain is a present opportunity to choose." > "If you want to be better at presence, work on absence first." > "She did what she could." > "The kingdom is an invitation to play. You must be this curious to enter." > "I don't believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe there is meaning in how we respond to all things that happen to us." > "Afraid yet filled with joy." --- # Connections & Further Reading - [[LOW]] by John Pavlovitz -- His companion Advent devotional, similar format but focused on the incarnation rather than the resurrection. - [[A Bigger Table]] by John Pavlovitz -- Expands on the radical hospitality themes present in several entries here (Days 9, 33, 35). - [[Falling Upward]] by Richard Rohr -- Rohr's framework of the "two halves of life" maps directly onto Pavlovitz's journey from certainty to mystery. Pavlovitz is essentially writing from the second half. - [[The Ragamuffin Gospel]] by Brennan Manning -- Manning's emphasis on grace for the broken and the doubting shares DNA with Pavlovitz's approach, though Manning is less politically engaged. - [[Lament for a Son]] by Nicholas Wolterstorff -- A more philosophically rigorous treatment of the grief theology Pavlovitz touches on in Day 12. - [[When the Heart Waits]] by Sue Monk Kidd -- Kidd's spiritual autobiography covers similar territory: doubt, waiting, the dissolution of old certainties, and the emergence of a new faith. --- # Personal Reflection ## What surprised me? The self-criticism. I expected a progressive Christian devotional to spend most of its energy critiquing conservative Christianity, and there's some of that here. But the strongest entries are the ones where Pavlovitz turns on himself -- admitting his enemy-love is performative (Day 38), confessing that he cheers when Pharisees get scolded without recognizing himself in them (Day 43), acknowledging that his friend who left faith entirely seemed freer than him (Day 24). That honesty is the book's best feature and the thing that separates it from generic progressive Christian writing. ## What challenged me? Day 12 ("Death Stinks") challenged me most. Pavlovitz refuses to spiritualize grief. He doesn't offer resurrection as a consolation prize for people who've lost someone. He just sits in the anger of not getting someone back, and he names the jealousy of reading miracle stories when your own story didn't get that ending. That's an uncomfortable place for a devotional to leave you, and he doesn't try to resolve it. The tension is the point. ## What will I apply? The "fears and false stories" framework from Day 17 is immediately practical. In any conflict, look for what the other person is afraid of, and figure out whether that fear is based on accurate information. It's not about winning arguments -- it's about reducing fear. That reframe is simple enough to actually use. The repeated call to presence -- leaving the phone, being unavailable, choosing the person in front of you over the audience far away -- is the kind of thing I know is right and consistently fail to practice. Pavlovitz doesn't moralize about it; he tells stories about his own failures, which makes the challenge land harder. ## Readwise Highlights - [[3. Resources/Readwise/Books/Rise|Rise - Kindle Highlights]]