Author: John Pavlovitz

Nearly 100,00 people, America. 100,000 lives in just over 100 days. 100,000 mothers, best friends, favorite uncles, beloved teachers, helpful neighbors, papas, grandmas, first loves, only children, soul mates. 100,000 givers and helpers and creators and lovers and thinkers and healers. 100,000 silenced laughs and interrupted plans and abandoned dreams and stilled bodies and quieted voices. 100,000 empty chairs and beds and house and embraces. In three months: 1 fully packed football stadium, 38 9/11s, 1.75 Vietnam Wars. How do you properly grieve this kind of subtraction of humanity? How do you adequately mourn the unfathomable scale and the...

I know many people fortunate enough to know god personally. They’re able to say with great confidence and precise specificity, what the Maker of All Things is doing at any given moment; his or her motives, methods, and intentions—especially in times of tragedy and consequence. I used to be one of those people. I used to toss words around lazily, ascribing purpose to the terrible seasons and painful circumstances people pass through. It wasn’t done with malice or with an intent to mislead people, I’d just convinced myself that I could make sense of senseless things—because, Jesus. Every national...

As a white man watching the Michigan protests of Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders, all I could think was: Black people don’t get to do this. Muslims don’t get to do this. Latinos don’t get to do this. People who look different in any way don’t get to do this. They don’t get to swarm American capitol buildings in tactical gear with high-powered weapons, screaming in close proximity to police officers. They don’t get to dress up like Call of Duty cosplayers and attempt to physically intimidate politicians into bending to their wills. They don’t get to get to...

Ever since the restrictions and cancellations and changes in response to COVID-19 began a few weeks ago – back before we regularly used terms like social distancing, self-isolation, and flattening the curve, we’ve all been asking the same question: “When will things return to normal?” They won’t. Returning to normal, would involve some precise dividing line by which we could cleanly delineate the end of this event and the beginning of something else coming. It would also suggest that if there were such a line, that we could cross it unencumbered without carrying those days with us. That of...