The Book for Adults
Ready for a journey through time
Christmas read from its completion.
The Book
The manger was not a beginning.
It was an arrival.
What arrived in Bethlehem was settled long before: the Lamb, foreseen before the foundation of the world. This book reads Christmas from the end, from its completion, and the familiar story suddenly opens wide.
A single line runs through all of Scripture: from the first tent roof over the garden to the child of whom John writes, literally, that he tabernacled among us, and on, until God dwells with men at the end.
And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.
God does not want to come as a guest. He wants to stay. Whoever reads the manger this way keeps Christmas differently.
What Is Easily Overlooked
The hidden signs.
The Christmas story is full of small signs that we read past, because we know them too well. Here are four.
The House of Bread
Bethlehem means “house of bread.” To that place comes the one who says of himself: I am the bread of life. This is no coincidence. This is a signature.
The Swaddling Cloths as a Sign
The shepherds are given a sign: a child, wrapped in swaddling cloths, in a manger. The one who is wrapped is the one who is cared for. And one day another cloth will be left lying, still wrapped.
A Choir for the Few
All of heaven opens, and the audience is a handful of shepherds in the field. This is how God celebrates: the greatest news for the smallest.
God Learned
The one through whom everything was made learns to walk, learns to speak, comes to know hunger. He does not only become man. He becomes a child. Arrival cannot come any closer.
The Way Through the Book
Fourteen stations, one line.
- 00An Invitation
- 01The Day Before the First Day
- 02The Tent Roof and the Garden
- 03The First Announcement of Christmas
- 04The Tent in the Wilderness
- 05Now Is the Time
- 06The Hidden Becoming
- 07The Night
- 08The Manger Carries the Cross
- 09The Name
- 10Reconciled
- 11The Dwelling of God with Men
- 12The Gaze That Means You
- 13He Himself
In the middle a short story waits to be read aloud, for the evening under the tree, when grown-ups and little ones sit together. And at the end a sentence you have long known and yet never heard quite like this.
The Songs
First God speaks. Then you answer.
This book is inspired by the jesusTALK Christmas songs, and of course by the Bible. The songs stand within it in their places. Most of them are God's voice through the story, the last is man's answer to the gaze.
God's Voice
- Als der Vater die Welt ansah
- Das heilige Lied der Weihnacht
- In jener heiligen Nacht
- Bevor die Sterne waren
- Das Lamm und das Kreuz
The Answer
- Stille Nacht (ehrliche Nacht)
For Preachers
This Christmas also comes as a digging tool for the pulpit: a finished sermon in five finds, documented down to the source.
Read, listen, give away
As a book, as an e-book, as an audiobook.
To read yourself, to give away, or read aloud for the road and the evening in the dark under the tree. All editions come out in October, in good time before Christmas. The order links will be right here then.