Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

The Everlasting Arms

Early in our relationship, my now-husband and I bonded over a common enemy: the red-winged blackbird. (Clearly, we were meant to be.)

We were walking and chatting together on the bike path when we discovered that in recent months both of us had been dive-bombed by said birds (without any provocation our part, I might add). Daniel had been riding his bicycle and I was out for a jog, and apparently both of us got a little too close to Mama Blackbird’s nest. That’s when militant squawking ensued and there was some talon-to-head contact.

Daniel handled things with his trademark unflappable calm, proceeding to simply ride faster and outpace the bird. I wish I could say the same for myself, but all the rush-hour commuters who witnessed my full-body flailing at the corner of Route 25 might tell you otherwise.

Perhaps my bad experience with birds has tainted my view, but I have to admit I was a little surprised to find God compared to a bird several times in the book of Deuteronomy. God as a lion? No problem. A lamb? I can work with that. But a bird?

In Deuteronomy 32:11 we see God described as carrying us on his wings:

Like an eagle that rouses her chicks
and hovers over her young,
so he spread his wings to take them up
and carried them safely on his pinions.

The next chapter paints a similar image of God soaring across the skies as we fly tandem with him. All the while he’s driving out the enemy that’s out to get us:

There is no one like the God of Israel.
He rides across the heavens to help you,
across the skies in majestic splendor.
The eternal God is your refuge,
and his everlasting arms are under you.
He drives out the enemy before you;
he cries out, “Destroy them!”
—Deuteronomy 33:26-27

And suddenly I see the red-winged blackbird scenario from another angle. What if, instead of the one being dive-bombed, I were one of the babies in the nest?

I have to admit that, personal biases aside, birds must be some of the most graceful animals—soaring, as they do, almost effortlessly through the sky. But when their little ones are in danger, watch out, because nothing is going to get in their way.

Gratefully our God has both these sides to his own character. He rides across the heavens in majestic splendor, but at the same time, when his children are in trouble, he doesn’t hesitate to drive out the enemy before them.

Every time I see a bird soaring through the sky, may it remind me of those everlasting arms that are under me. Those arms that are both graceful and protective.

But in the meantime, I’m not taking any chances: you’ll find me on a different jogging trail from now on.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

Grandma’s Prayer

“Grandma, how can we pray for you?” I asked.

For the 40 days of Lent, my husband, Daniel, and I did an experiment of sorts, and each day leading up to Easter we prayed for a different friend or family member.

I was especially curious what my grandma would request prayer for. She’s in pretty remarkable health, physically and mentally, considering she’s almost 90. But even so, she no doubt has her share of aches and pains she might want relief from. Or, I figured, she might ask for prayer for Grandpa, whose health has been gradually declining in recent years. On top of that, she has 12 children, more grandchildren than I can keep track of, and even some great-grandchildren now. There were plenty of items she could have ticked off for a prayer list.

But after a pause, she surprised me with her response. “You know,” she said, “I’ve spent most of my life petitioning God for things. But at this stage in my life, I find I have just one prayer left.”

I held my breath, waiting for some profound spiritual insight.

“I just want to say thank you.”

I knew phone etiquette compelled me to say something, but an unswallowable lump had lodged itself in my throat.

Grandma broke the silence. “God has been so faithful to us. It’s easy to forget all the beautiful things he has done,” she said. “I’ve spent so much time asking. Now it’s time to be thanking.”

The day Daniel and I chose to pray for Grandma and Grandpa fell less than a week later. That day Grandma found herself by Grandpa’s side in a hospital room. It was “just” the flu, but in his weakened condition, the doctors were concerned. He was dehydrated, and his white blood cell count was alarmingly low.

I confess that my mind was distracted as we prayed: Would Grandma change her request if she’d known what was coming? I wondered. Does she regret not asking for protection, for healing, for a physical miracle? What good is thankfulness, after all, when you’re sitting beside the hospital bed of someone you love?

But I know Grandma better than that. No doubt she was sitting by Grandpa’s side offering prayers of thanksgiving even at that moment. Thanking God for giving her this man in the first place. Thanking him for the 66 good years they’d had together. Thanking him for being God, even now.

I hope I can learn that kind of graceful praying someday. And with a model like the one I have, I hope I won’t have to wait until I’m 88.

What can you say thank you for today?

Home, Gracious Home

If ever a man had a right to feel homeless, it was Moses.

After being adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter as an infant, he spent most of his childhood separated from his family, his people, his culture. Then, as a young man, Moses was exiled out of Egypt and found himself setting up camp in yet another strange land. He was, without question, “a foreigner in a foreign land” (Exodus 2:22).

After God got Moses’ attention in the form of a spontaneously combusting bush, Moses headed back to Egypt. But this was no nostalgic journey back to the homeland. Instead, he was there to do a jailbreak of sorts for his fellow Israelites, who were living as slaves under the harsh rule of the Egyptians.

Once they’d made their break from Egypt, Moses again found himself homeless. But this time he wasn’t the only one without a forwarding address. He was in charge of several thousand people who quickly expressed their displeasure at their lack of four walls. For 40 years, they wandered through the wilderness, longing for a permanent place to call home.

Perhaps that’s why the opening lines of Psalm 90 hit me so powerfully, knowing they were penned by this reluctant vagrant:

Lord, through all the generations
you have been our home!
Before the mountains were born,
before you gave birth to the earth and the world,
from beginning to end, you are God.
—Psalm 90:1-2

When I was in my early 20s I bought a place of my own, and let’s just say it fell into the “has potential” category. When I arrived on the day of the closing, I was shocked to discover that the family who lived there hadn’t packed the majority of their things yet. I wasn’t even able to get into the house until five hours after the agreed-upon time. Complicating matters, I’d closed on my old place the same day, so everything needed to be unloaded that night.

At one moment, looking around at the filthy condo, still cluttered with the previous owners’ abandoned belongings, I despaired that this place would never feel like home. I took a breath and went from room to room, trying to size up what I was up against.

My despair melted into humility and gratitude at what I saw. When I peeked into the bathroom, I noticed my aunt, her sleeves rolled up, scrubbing the upstairs toilet. Two of my friends were in the guest room, unloading box after box of books (and never once complaining about the ridiculous book-to-person ratio). My mom’s head was deep in the oven, muscling off a decade of grime and grease. My dad was carrying my fold-out couch up the stairs—the one that was so heavy he’d previously sworn he’d never move it again. My uncle was removing garbage bags full of trash left by the old owners. Another friend was on her way to get dinner for the whole crew.

In that moment, I had a revelation. Home is not found in a place; it’s found in relationship. Even if I had nowhere to lay my head that night, I had home. It was written all over the faces of these people who loved me.

At the end of his life, Moses was instructed by God to climb Mount Nebo. From there God showed him the Promised Land—the home his people had been longing for so many years. The Israelites would be able to enter, but Moses would only get to see it from afar (Deuteronomy 32:48-52).

It seems heartbreaking to me, even a touch unfair, that this servant of God who had led the people so faithfully for decades wouldn’t be able to settle into this long-awaited homeland himself.

But Moses knew better. He’d already discovered his true home.

Eventually my condo did feel like home, thanks to the people who graced me on moving day and the ensuing days thereafter.

But I hope I never forget that home, real home, is more than a mailing address.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

The Burden of Love

During Lent this year, my husband and I have embarked on a 40-day adventure of sorts. Initially we went through the list of things we might give up, as tradition would dictate. But this year, to our surprise, we felt compelled in a different direction—to the discipline of adding something to our daily routine instead of taking something away.

And so, during this countdown to Easter, we decided to pray for one friend or family member each day. We asked 40 people how we could specifically pray for their needs on the date set aside for them.

These were all people we knew well, and we figured we were pretty much up to speed on what was happening in their lives. But as the e-mails and calls started rolling in, something unanticipated took place. All at once we were given an invitation to go deeper into their stories, their hurts. Something about this simple invitation—“How can we pray for you?”—cracked open a sacred place between us. A place of sharing real life with one another.

One by one we logged the requests:

• The mother who just days earlier had received the diagnosis: Stage 3 cancer. A tumor the size of cantaloupe.
• The woman who recently got stationed at an army base on the other side of the world and feels so alone.
• The young husband who needs a job to provide for his wife and unborn baby.
• The girl whose father is mentally ill and is desperate to feel God’s Father-love for her.
• The couple who is grieving the baby they never got to meet.
• The man whose wife of 50-plus years is slipping away from him in the grip of Alzheimer’s.
• The older brother who is begging for God’s intervention on behalf of his prodigal brother.
• The aging parents who worry about how to care for their special needs son as their health declines.

According to the Gospel accounts, several women were there with Jesus on the first Good Friday, as he walked that long, arduous road to the cross. The Via Dolorosa, it’s called—“the Way of Suffering.” From a practical standpoint, there wasn’t much these women could do. They couldn’t carry Jesus’ cross, they couldn’t stop his pain, they couldn’t prevent the blow that awaited him at Calvary.

According to tradition, Jesus’ mother and Veronica, among others, walked this road with Jesus, wiping sweat from his face, mourning and wailing for him. They walked with him because they loved him. They walked with him to show him he wasn’t alone during his darkest hour.

Over the past 40 days, some of our prayers have been answered; others have been met with conspicuous silence. But along the way, something unexpected, mysterious, has transpired. I’m not sure I can put my finger on it exactly, there has been a shift in my soul.

As we’ve walked this journey alongside these people we love, we’ve experienced the unexpected blessing of sharing their burdens, their hurts, their crosses. We may not be able to remove their suffering or change what they’re going through, but there are small things we can do. Like wiping their brow. And reminding them that they’re not alone.

When one of our friends sent us his prayer request, he added this note at the end: “I hope, no matter what blessing and grace you seek for others, you yourselves receive grace and blessing from sharing God’s heart and the burden of love.”

He was more right than we possibly could have understood at the time. As we approach Good Friday, the most surprising discovery has not what we’ve given but what we’ve received.

Somehow in the process of trying to extend love, it has splashed back on us instead.

An Ice Cream for an Ice Cream

One of my earliest memories was something that happened when I was almost four years old, and it involves ice cream. Now before you conjure up an idyllic scene of childhood nostalgia, I should warn you that this isn’t, for the most part, a particularly sweet memory.

My family was on vacation, and we’d stopped for ice cream, a rare treat for us since at that point in my life, Mom had me pretty much convinced that fruit constituted dessert.

I remember standing on the porch outside the ice cream shop, licking my vanilla soft serve and lost in my own dream world. Meanwhile I must have been backing up, oblivious to the older gentleman behind me with a sundae in his hand, because before I knew it, I heard the sickening sound of ice cream hitting pavement. Then the man was yelling angry words, alternately at me and then at my parents. He had lost his ice cream, and he was demanding justice.

I’ve often had trouble reconciling the Old Testament’s portrayal of God’s justice with the picture of grace painted in the New Testament. The book of Deuteronomy captures the idea of divine retribution in this often quoted verse: “You must show no pity for the guilty! Your rule should be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deuteronomy 19:21).

It makes sense that when a wrong has been done, payment is required. Things need to be made right again. But how does that jive with Jesus’ words in the New Testament that God is a God of love, that we should turn the other cheek?

But if God is immutable, constant, unchanging, then clearly his character didn’t shift somewhere between Malachi and Matthew. Maybe what’s at issue here is my understanding of grace.

Grace, upon closer examination, isn’t so much about letting other people off the hook (or getting off the hook ourselves). It doesn’t mean justice is negated. It means that the payment for a wrong is made by someone other than the one who owes the debt.

At three and a half, I never would have been able to pay for the grumpy old man’s ice cream, even if I’d had access to all the pennies in my piggy bank. Fortunately, my dad took the man by the elbow, led him back into the shop, and bought him a replacement sundae.

In doing so, Dad managed to fulfill both the law of justice and the demand of grace. The obligation for the ice cream was paid in full: an eye for an eye, or as they case may be, an ice cream for an ice cream. And I received the grace of having a debt covered on my behalf, by my father.

That’s just what our heavenly Father has done for us through Christ: his eye for our eye, his tooth for our tooth, his hand for our hand, his foot for our foot.

Paid in full. For all eternity.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

God’s Underground Work

When I was living in my first place after college, I made the rather impulsive decision one Sunday afternoon to buy a package of daffodil bulbs. It was only after I arrived home that I realized I didn’t have anything even closely resembling a shovel. But by that point I was determined to make the bulb-planting happen. Today.

So I pulled out an old knife and thought, How hard can this be? As it turned out, digging 12 inches into the dirt might as well have been muscling to the center of the earth when you’re using a dull kitchen blade. By the time I was ready to drop the final bulb in the ground, my arms were aching and my knees and hands were caked with dirt, but I was feeling pretty satisfied.

Then I took my first real look at the brown, dead-looking thing in my palm. I’d seen plenty of daffodils in the past, and presumably they’d all started out this way, but suddenly I was assailed by doubts. How could something that looked like a rotting turnip be transformed into a sunny, yellow flower? But with a shrug I put the last bulb in the dirt and went inside to retire the now-worthless knife.

I promptly forgot about my little gardening experiment…until the next April. One day I looked out my back window, and to my surprise, a small but tenacious sprout was trying to poke its head out of the cold, unforgiving earth.

Isn’t that a picture of what God does with our lives too? To a casual observer, we look dead, ugly, hopeless. But God doesn’t give up on us. During those seasons when we’re all but buried, when it looks like Satan has won after all—that’s precisely when God does his best redemptive work. He uses those months under the cover of soil to build us up, make us strong, prepare us for who he wants us to be.

And when the first hint of spring arrives, we will stick out our heads, tentatively at first, and then with increasing boldness. As our faces open to the Son, he will transform us. From despair to hope. From death to new life.

And we, turnipy-looking things that we are, will be a tangible display of his glorious grace.

On Lollipops and Intercession

The other day I had the privilege of seeing Hannah, one of my favorite six-year-olds. She and her mom and I were together for a girls’ day out, and as always, Hannah delighted me with her joy for life—telling me her latest knock-knock jokes, impressing me with the new words she knew how to spell, and catching me up on all the big first grade news that had happened since I saw her last.

I’ll never forget six year ago when Hannah’s mom, one of my dear friends, called me after she got her ultrasound results. “Guess what we’re having?” she asked me with that trademark mischief in her voice.

I was confident: “A girl!”

“Yes . . .” There was an, er, pregnant pause.

“And a boy! We’re having twins!

Aside from their tow-headedness, Hannah and Josiah are as different as can be—she loves to read; he loves to build things. She likes to play princess; he likes to play engineer. But you couldn’t find a pair of siblings more loyal than these two.

We were at the store together, and Hannah’s mom let her choose a movie to buy. After carefully scanning the options, she opted for a case covered in pink glitter and hugged it to her chest. We were headed to the checkout line when Hannah paused mid-step. “Mom, I can’t get this one,” she said, her eyes wide. “I don’t think Josiah would like this one.” She promptly returned the movie to the shelf and made a more boy-friendly selection.

I raised my eyebrows and looked at my friend, impressed. Most first-grade princesses I know would rub their brother’s nose in such a victory and never look back.

“She’s always watching out for her brother,” Hannah’s mom told me. “Whenever we go to the bank and get a lollipop, she makes sure to get one for her brother too. She never wants him to miss out on something.”

Just a few days later, I read the account of Moses and his siblings in the book of Numbers. Apparently Aaron and Miriam were razzing him about his choice of a wife (Numbers 12:1-2). God was none too happy about their whining, and he struck Moses’ sister with a skin disease.

Moses’ response fascinates me: he didn’t act justified; he didn’t say, “I told you so.” Instead, he responded with the grace of intercession. He begged God on behalf of the sister who just moments earlier had been giving him grief: “Moses cried out to the LORD, ‘O God, I beg you, please heal her!’” (Numbers 12:13).

When my brothers and sisters in Christ are in trouble, what’s my response? Do I think, Well, they got what was coming to them? Or do I step in before our Father and intercede on their behalf?

In other words, will I be content with my own lollipop, or will I humble myself to beg for one on my sibling’s behalf as well?

I hope someday I’ll be a little more like Hannah.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

God’s Gracious Smile

In my job as an editor, one of my biggest joys is receiving notes from readers and hearing how a certain book touched them. Of all the notes I’ve gotten over the years, though, there’s one that especially stands out.

The e-mail came to me from a 10-year-old girl who had just finished reading a children’s fiction series about a girl and her horse:

I used to think God was too busy to ever think about us, and the only times he did was when he was mad about something. And I thought he was just always frowning at us, so I never really talked to him. I didn’t understand what it meant in the Bible when it says you’re supposed to fear God.

Young as she is, this girl articulated what so many of us, deep down, fear is true—that when God looks at us, his face is screwed up in a frown. He sees all our shortcomings and failures, and he wishes we’d be a little smarter, a little more well-behaved, a little more spiritual. Even if we acknowledge that at some level he’s obligated to love us, we picture him as distant or at least mildly dissatisfied with us.

Then the girl goes on:

But then I read these books and I realized I was wrong. Especially when I read how Ellie pictured God smiling. Since then I’ve thought about him smiling about different things, and I talk to him a lot. Anyway I just wanted to tell you that and thank you very much for the books.

In the book of Numbers, Aaron gets instructions about his duties as a priest. This role was especially significant in the Old Testament because the priest wasn’t just the spiritual leader; he was God’s representative to the people. The priest was charged with showing them, in a sense, what God looked like. So when the Lord revealed the blessing Aaron should give the people, it wasn’t just some nice, poetic-sounding language. It was a picture of God’s very face.

May the LORD bless you
and protect you.
May the LORD smile on you
and be gracious to you.
May the LORD show you his favor
and give you his peace.
—Numbers 6:24-26

When I read this verse, I can’t help but think of another 10-year-old. Me. As a kid, I was sensitive with a side of drama, so I often felt like going to school was some kind of epic battle. I feared that I wouldn’t fit in, that someone would make fun of me, that I’d fall short somehow.

But every morning my mom served as my own Aaron. She’d wait at the bus stop each day and recite the priestly blessing over my brother and me: “May the Lord bless you and keep you. . . . May the Lord smile on you. . . .”

No matter what battles might be waiting for me that day, there was something I could cling to that would make it all bearable: I knew what God’s face looked like. He wasn’t frowning; he was smiling.

And he was smiling on me.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

Grace on the Streets of Bangkok

Jubilee. The word itself sounds like a party on the tongue.

This celebration is spelled out in the book of Leviticus: once the Israelites entered the Promised Land, every fifty years all debts would be forgiven, all slaves would be released, and there would be “freedom throughout the land for all who live there” (Leviticus 25:10). That year would be set apart as holy, and no work was to be done on the land for an entire year.

I can just imagine servants checking days off on a calendar, longing for the year of Jubilee, when their time of captivity would finally be over. Since the Jubilee came just twice in a century, most people probably experienced only one in a lifetime. Maybe the younger generation heard rumblings about the previous celebration and looked forward to the next one with great anticipation, half wondering if it was too good to be true.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a slave desperately longing for freedom. But I once got a glimpse of something similar through the eyes of a young woman on the streets of Bangkok.

I was on a short-term trip to Thailand, working with an organization that helps free women from the sex industry in Bangkok’s red-light district. Our group’s ultimate goal was to connect women to the ministry and let them know another way of life was available to them.

We did that by buying women out for the night so they wouldn’t have to work. For the equivalent of $20 in US currency, the woman (or in most cases, young girl) would be free to go home and just be a human being, with no pressure to belong to another person for the evening.

I’ll never forget the look on Buk’s face when our group bought her out the first night we were there. She kept trying to figure out what the catch was, what our hidden agenda was. Surely this was too good to be true. But when we finally got through to her that we’d paid her bar fee simply because we wanted to show her God’s love—because we, too, had been set free, redeemed—her smile was so bright it dimmed the garish neon lights of the strip.

I wouldn’t have been able to put it into words then, but I know now what I was seeing. Buk’s face told her own tale of Jubilee, if only for one night.

I don’t know where Buk is today, but I pray that one day she will experience permanent Jubilee—the eternal freedom we can experience knowing that Jesus paid the fee—for all of us.

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.

God as Party Planner

When I think of my favorite family memories, I’m struck by how many of them revolve around holiday traditions. My siblings and I are grown up now (chronologically speaking), but we hold as tightly as ever to those old nostalgic habits whenever a holiday rolls around.

There’s the annual Turkey Bowl football game, played by three generations of family members; the “midnight moonlight walk” every Christmas Eve, when we get bundled up for a hike in the woods, whatever the weather; the New Year’s Eve time capsule, where we make outlandish predictions for the year ahead; and of course the egg-cracking contest that happens around the table at Easter brunch, complete with brackets and elimination rounds.

As I was making my way through Leviticus, with all its rules about sacrificial offerings, clean and unclean foods, purification rites, and even regulations about mold, I have to admit my eyes were glazing over a bit. So I was sufficiently taken off guard when I hit Leviticus 23. In the midst of all the talk of laws and consequences, God had another command for his people: declare a national holiday! (Seven, for that matter.)

It’s easy for me to think of God (especially as he appears in the Old Testament) as a rule maker, an enforcer, a judge. But a party planner? Hardly.

As I reflected on the celebration instructions God gave his people, it occurred to me that he knows we aren’t made to work nonstop, going through the motions day in and day out. He also knows that left to our own devices, we’ll just keep trudging along in the everyday, not taking the time to pause and appreciate the things he’s done and the people he’s placed around us. So he encourages us—no, commands us—to celebrate.

The word celebrate is used six times in one chapter: “Celebrate,” God tells his people. “Celebrate each year”; “be careful to celebrate”; “celebrate with joy” (Leviticus 23).

I’m not sure God had family football specifically in mind, but I do think he envisioned the memories, the laughter, the connections that occur when families and friends gather together.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’d best get to work on organizing the bracket for that egg-cracking contest in a few weeks….

I’ve taken the challenge of reading the Bible chronologically this year and tracing the thread of grace through it. These musings are prompted by my reading. I’d love to have you join me: One Year Bible reading plan.