We are now mid-January in what already feels like the longest year on record. News headlines from the first ten days of 2026 could make anyone weep— from renewed airstrikes in Syria to Iran’s bloody crackdown on dissent to Ukraine’s ongoing battlefields and widespread power outages. 

And that represents only a small sampling of the news. Reading it overwhelms us; its weight can bring us to our knees in lament and prayer.

Typically, I begin a new year not with a resolution, but with a hope for the future: a Star Word chosen at random or a prayerful intention to guide my year. But here we are at the midpoint of January and I admit that I have not begun this spiritual practice. 

Grief for our world has numbed me and I cannot yet bring myself to do it. Perhaps my experience in 2020 taught me this hesitation. 

That year, I chose to “say no to things.” I decided to say no to nonsense, but I soon found myself saying “no” to nearly everything as life shut down: my ministry work, schools, and, for a time, my entire city.

I hoped my “no” would make room for the “yeses” of love, joy, and grace. But 2020 felt like one long, unbroken refusal. That memory makes me reluctant to claim any grand resolutions this year because January offers little beyond the unknown.

The unknown unsettles us, but faith knows it well. Scripture does not tell the story of people who knew how events would unfold; it records how God’s people acted anyway. The Bible holds stories of doubt, uncertainty, and fear alongside accounts of God’s faithful presence.

Faith may not quiet our fears, but it reminds us that we never face them alone. Rather than erase fear, faith teaches us how to live with it while continuing to choose justice and compassion amid uncertainty. Again and again, the scriptures show us how to answer the world’s chaos—not with despair but with love.

In moments like these, some people try to quiet chaos by crafting rules that make “faithful” living seem simple and clear-cut. They might even urge us to become Romans 13 Christians, obedient to the powers that be without question. But reading this passage in isolation risks silencing conscience. 

The same Bible that includes Paul’s letter to the Roman church also tells stories of empires that crush the vulnerable and rulers who lose authority when they abandon justice. When people use Romans 13 to insist that allegiance to the state outweighs allegiance to God, they contradict the broader witness of scripture.

Obedience to the Divine has never meant unquestioning compliance with every decree of power.

Ancient-Future Models of Resistance

Long before Romans, the scriptures offer another model of faithful resistance. In the opening chapters of Exodus, authorities command Hebrew midwives to participate in state-sanctioned violence by killing all newborn boys. 

The midwives refuse. The text tells us that Shiphrah and Puah “feared God,” and that fear led them not to obedience, but to resistance. 

They quietly and courageously deliver babies as an act of protest against power. They revere life rather than destroy it. They protect the vulnerable rather than comply. They act as change agents and liberators, faithfully doing the messy work of midwifery amid threats, injustice, and fear. Their resistance mattered and so does ours.

Only weeks into a new year, we are watching governments, including our own, exercise power in ways that degrade human dignity. Across the United States, ICE agents continue to detain people in conditions that shock the conscience, while members of Congress debate enforcement policies such as face-mask restrictions. 

Leaders describe the killing of an unarmed woman as “devastating,” insisting that it “cannot happen again.” Meanwhile, authorities blocked Representatives Kelly Morrison, Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig from entering an ICE detention center in Minnesota, despite a judge’s ruling affirming Congress’s right to oversight. 

From the Caribbean to Venezuela, from Greenland to the United States, we witness the same story told in different languages: officials reduce people to problems, treat land as a commodity, and demand obedience without accountability. These patterns confront us with an uncomfortable truth: Faithfulness does not equal obedience, laws do not always serve justice, and power too often chooses death over life.

To be people of faith at this moment is to ask what it means to do the messy work of a midwife—to safeguard our neighbors’ lives and dignity when they face risk. 

Midwife Energy

We do this when we refuse language that dehumanizes migrants and immigrants and when we press our representatives to oppose discriminatory policy changes, whether they target H-1B visa holders or asylum seekers.

We do it when we challenge policies that harm rather than heal, policies that restrict access to healthcare, education or basic safety. We show up in tangible ways because we cannot speak honestly about peace while participating in systems that produce violence. 

We protest. We call and write to local leaders. We demand humane policies with persistence and clarity.

We choose courage over compliance and commit to compassion over convenience.

We trust that even small, quiet acts of defiance—helping a neighbor navigate bureaucracy, donating to mutual aid networks, mentoring young people, collecting food for those facing food insecurity—make a difference. These acts ripple outward, creating space for new life to emerge.

I am not making a resolution this year. Instead, I am praying for more Shiphrah and Puah energy, a prayer that carries hope even in January’s uncertainty. 

Like the midwives, we may not know how the story will unfold before us. But we can still have the courage to do the next faithful thing. 

At a vigil for Renee Good, whose death at the hands of an ICE agent has become a flashpoint in national debates about immigration enforcement, Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld urged clergy, and all people of faith, to “stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.” In other words, our calling extends beyond speech. 

We embody compassion and protection in a world that too often ignores or punishes vulnerability. We can choose dignity over decree, trusting that every act of love and resistance matters.

You are not wrong to feel tired and overwhelmed already. You are not faithless for feeling afraid. 

But you are not excused from love. There is still work to do and this year can be our year of rebellious midwifery.