While our communities continue to be surveilled, detained, and disappeared, mothers still rise in resistance. Rizpah, like the madres and abuelitas of Argentina, reminds us that empire’s greatest fear is women who refuse to forget.

Even if not invested in war directly, much of our theology is steeped in violence. We hear it in Sunday school songs, see it in images of a triumphant Christ wielding a sword, and witness it in political leaders who stoke division with violent rhetoric.

My spiritual director asked me, “Have you ever heard of Mary, Untier of Knots?”

I am trying to say that the Lord is teaching me that SEEKING is BEING! You see, God is not calling us to DO more. We get it wrong all the time. We have enough to DO. SEEKING requires spending time, listening, heeding, and obeying.

The message of the angel is as scandalous and striking now as it was then. For in it is embedded God’s message in the death and resurrection of Jesus: to trust and believe in the invincibility of the good in spite of the titanic reality of evil, because God is good all the time.

Prayer seeks the good and well-being of others. It is an act and expression of love as we lift someone or some circumstances before the God whom the Bible says is love. And that is not only a matter of expression. It leads to and undergirds outward action.