A Different Story of Christmas: An Advent Devotional

A Different Story of Christmas: An Advent Devotional is spent with the text of John's Apocalypse. It is not enough to intuit the signs of cultural changes or demise; one must also intuit the presence of the Kingdom. Living apocalyptically is all about seeing what cannot be seen: like a hunter/tracker seeing the signs. In this devotional, that means living with spiritual senses sharpened to reveal what is going on around you! It will mean integrating the five senses into the spiritual to experience what seems veiled and, therefore, to have the capacity to reveal it to others. I think John the Revelator reveals what happens in Heaven as the Veil of the Temple is torn away.

John describes the whole of human history as a revolving book. It is The Neverending Story handed to humanity to learn its meaning. John presents The Apocalypse as a drama to be read – even reenacted – by the churches. Therefore, an interpretive drama could be applied to the entire text of The Apocalypse to be performed by John's addressees in his absence. The characters of this drama are divine and heavenly beings, otherworldly creatures, and John. The scenes are sometimes set mythically with strange characters centerstage and humans in the blurry periphery and background; or humans in a blurry center with the periphery and background clearly presented. John seems to be the one human clearly seen. John's text is presented with worship and music.

It seems John's mind races back and forth between a gleeful, heavenly ballet performing the stirring sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus, heavenly battle, the four horsemen and people bound to history, and these marketplace-martyrs who capture so much of his attention throughout The Apocalypse. Pesky yet affable, impervious yet approachable, stand-up resisters yet bowed-servers of others, facing a world wanting them to be silent yet perfuming heaven with the sound of their prayers, rejected yet the very reason for Emmanuel's presence.

A Different Story of Christmas offers dramatic scenes of ecological and spiritual desecration; highlights mechanisms of propaganda, power and oppression, coercive social constructs, economies of poverty, and politics of violence seen as the revolving human story. Against that backdrop is the presence of the Reign of God in the Person of Emmanuel, God with us, and his invitation to rebuild our world through nonviolence, nonpower, liberation, peace and love.

The daily devotions give the text of The Apocalypse as John's Nativity – from birth to coronation. Each devotion provides music, including YouTube links, and sometimes poetry. There is an introductory explanation for using the devotional; twenty-eight devotions for the days of Advent; devotions for Christmas Day and Epiphany; an extra devotion for any day of the year; and a schedule for years of Advent with fewer than twenty-eight days.

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