Stephanie Rische

Blogger and Writer: Capturing Stories of God's Grace

The God of Surprises

This holy week I’ve been thinking a lot about how God has this knack for surprising us. He gives us whispers about his coming, but he doesn’t usually spell out the itinerary for us, like the exact whens and wheres and hows.

This is tricky for planners like me. I want to know how it’s all going to play out. I like to pretend that’s so I can be prepared, but at some level, it’s because I like to think I have some measure of control.

The truth is, this habit of God’s to surprise us is precisely what I need. Because how do you build faith if you have the entire roadmap laid out for you? Besides, I’m pretty sure that if God gave me the whole picture in advance, I’d curl up in a fetal position and never get out of bed. I’m only brave enough for one step at a time.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus fulfilled those ancient whispers about his entry into Jerusalem. But he didn’t come the way the people expected. He didn’t come like a king, on a white horse. He didn’t come with a sword, surrounded by a fierce army. Instead, he came humbly, on a donkey.

Jesus comes. He always comes. But he doesn’t always come in the way we expect.

Shortly before his death, Jesus said he would rebuild the Temple in a mere three days. The people were incredulous—how could he do such a massive construction project in such a short time? But sure enough, three days after his crucifixion, the temple of his body was raised to life again.

Jesus comes. He always comes. But he doesn’t always come in the way we expect.

This Easter, I want to crack my heart open to God’s surprises. I want to follow the clues about his coming; I want to listen for the whispers. But I don’t want to be so stuck in the way I imagine his arrival that I miss him when he comes. I want to be ready for him, even when the way he comes is different from what I’d choose, what I’d expect, what I’d plan.

I don’t know what you’re facing right now, but I have a hunch that you, too, are longing for Jesus to come. Longing for him to show up in your pain and your doubt and your confusion. Longing for him to move your stone away. Longing for him to bring life out of death.

Jesus comes. He always comes. May we be ready for him, even when he doesn’t come in the way we expect.

Wasted Love

If you had been alive during that first Easter, who would you have been?

Would you have been Peter, bold and brash, defending Jesus in the only way you knew how?

Would you have been John, quiet and steadfast in your heartbreak?

Would you have been one of the women who wiped Jesus’ brow on his agonizing climb to Golgotha, showing love even as your hopes crumbled?

Would you have been Thomas, asking for proof yet keeping a sliver of belief alive?

I’m not sure who I would have been. I like to think I’d cling to hope even before I could see how everything unfolded, but I’m not sure. I’m much better at believing in miracles in retrospect, after I have the whole picture.

But it’s easy to identify the person I would like to be. I want to be Mary, who poured out her perfume on Jesus’ feet.

Just before he died, Jesus went to the home of his friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. And there, Mary enacted a most extravagant gesture of love. Here’s the story:

Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume made from essence of nard, and she anointed Jesus’ feet with it, wiping his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance.
John 12:3

You might think everyone around would have been impressed by Mary’s act of generosity. Instead, she was judged for being wasteful.

Judas Iscariot, the disciple who would soon betray [Jesus], said, “That perfume was worth a year’s wages. It should have been sold and the money given to the poor.”
John 12:4-5

According to some scholars, this jar of perfume was likely Mary’s dowry—what would have been given to a suitor to pay the bride price. The perfume was essentially her past and her future . . . and she lavished it on an uncredentialed rabbi from a backwoods town.

Jesus replied, “Leave her alone. She did this in preparation for my burial. You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.”
John 12:7-8

Sometimes I find myself assuming that Jesus would have been ultra-practical—frugal, even. “Waste not; want not”—that’s in the Bible somewhere, right? Somewhere near “God helps those who help themselves”?

But to my surprise, Jesus didn’t chastise Mary over the apparent wastefulness of her act. He didn’t tell her she should have focused on her savings account or reserved some her retirement. He didn’t even criticize her for not giving to charity.

He told her that her lavish devotion, her extravagant love, was beautiful.

And this Holy Week I wonder: What am I willing to “waste” on God and the people he’s given me to love?

Am I so concerned about being careful and judicious and economical that I fail to shower my love in unpractical ways?

What would it look like for us to show extravagant, “wasteful” love this week?

  • Maybe extravagant love looks like scrapping our to-do list and doing some leisurely Bible reading instead.
  • Maybe extravagant love looks like “wasting” the afternoon playing with your favorite little person, even if the proof isn’t captured on Facebook or Instagram.
  • Maybe extravagant love looks like doing something for someone who will never be able to pay you back or properly thank you.
  • Maybe extravagant love looks like “wasting” the morning by going on a walk and taking in the world God made.

Because here’s what I think—and I have a hunch Mary would agree: If it’s real love, it’s never wasted.

A True Story of Love and War and 67 Years

The year was 1946. The Nuremburg war trials had begun. Wartime price controls were being lifted in the United States. And America’s boys were slowly trickling back from the war…including the tall, dark-haired Lieutenant Voiland, having defied the odds and survived countless bombing missions on the European front.

His fiancée, Cay, had been waiting and praying anxiously, day by day, month by month, year by year, longing for her sweetheart to come home. She’d been planning their wedding while he was gone—the ultimate act of hope in the midst of a war in which half a million men who left never returned. With her trademark spunk, she refused to let the scarcity of silk prevent her from having a wedding dress, so she arranged to have a dress made from the unlikeliest of sources (I wrote about the remarkable story here).

For most of my life, I assumed Grandma and Grandpa’s February wedding date had been scheduled around Valentine’s Day. Whenever we gathered to celebrate as an extended family, we marked the occasion with red decorations and a heart-shaped cake, and I never heard anything to indicate otherwise.

It was only recently that I discovered their wedding date was determined not by Valentine’s Day but by Ash Wednesday.

“Ash Wednesday?” I asked Grandma. The dots weren’t connecting for me.

“Things were stricter back then,” Grandma said. “You couldn’t get married during Lent.”

g and g weddingOf course—Lent. The church took seriously this 40-day period of sacrifice, fasting, and repentance, and it was not the time for weddings and feasts.

Grandma winked at me. “I’d been waiting long enough,” she said. “I wasn’t about to wait until after Easter!”

And so, on a Tuesday morning, just a day before Ash Wednesday, they squeezed in a simple ceremony at the campus chapel. I’ve always been enchanted by the lone black-and-white photograph of Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day: Grandma looking beautiful and big eyed in that one-of-a-kind gown, and Grandpa, serious and handsome as ever in his classic suit.

***

This year Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday fell one day apart from each other, just a week before my grandparents’ 67th anniversary, and I was struck by the tender intersection of these sacred occasions: Valentine’s Day. A much-anticipated wedding. Ash Wednesday. Lent. An anniversary marking almost seven decades of marriage. And it got me to wondering: maybe Ash Wednesday is the perfect backdrop for a wedding after all. Valentine’s Day offers fine sentiments, of course—an appropriate reminder for us to express our love each year. But real love may be more aptly captured by a day marked by sacrifice and surrender and the choice to lay down one’s life.

Grandma and Grandpa know this well. The war showed them the cost of love from the very beginning: the agonizing separation—both by an ocean and by endless days, when the only threads connecting them were their love and a string of handwritten letters. And just because the war ended, that didn’t mean the sacrifices did. With the ratio of one income to 12 children, they sometimes had more month than they had money.

And now, as my grandparents are in their golden years, they are dealing with the sacrifices of caring for each other’s needs as their bodies and minds aren’t quite what they used to be.G&G

But if you asked them about the cost of love, they’d likely look at you with a bewildered shrug. That’s just what love does. It’s the very nature of love to give, to sacrifice, to lay down one’s life for one’s beloved.

And that is, after all, what we celebrate during Lent. This season marks the greatest romance of all time: the Savior who sacrificed everything to show us his love. The one who fought courageous battles on our behalf. The one who laid down his life for the ones he loves.

Love and Lent. Perhaps they’re more connected than I realized. 

So happy 67th anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa.

And happy VaLENTine’s season, everyone.

***

If you’d like to read more about my grandma and grandpa’s love story, including how Grandma’s dress was passed down to two more generations, check out my aunt Annie’s story here.

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.