Emmanuel in a Broken World: An Advent Devotional with Palestinian Christians
By Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice
Christians around the world are quickly moving toward Advent, the season of preparing ourselves for the arrival of our long-awaited Messiah.
Christians in the United States look forward to the traditions, comforts, sights, sounds, and smells of Advent and the Christmas season. We sing about that little town of Bethlehem, angels over open Judean fields, and silent Holy Land nights. It’s doubtful we give much thought to what life in those times was really like.
Emmanuel in a Broken World can fill in those missing details.
This Advent devotional written by 26 Palestinian Christians and family of Palestinian Christians gives further context to familiar biblical prophecies and stories of Jesus’ arrival.
Though framed by the traditional hope, peace, joy, and love, the reader won’t arrive at any of the four without first going through sorrow, despair, suffering, and even anger—all of which are truer to life now and the time and place Jesus was born than is much, if not most, of our typical sanitized and sentimentalized Advent fare.
Readers will be challenged to consider the scope of the gospel, and the Gospels, through the eyes of some whose families have lived in the land of the Bible for millennia—and have done so as Christians.
Each daily reading includes Scripture, the author’s reflection and biography, and a prayer. Each main section—hope, peace, joy, and love—concludes with art produced by Palestinian Christians, a story, and a group discussion and prayer guide.
Emmanuel in a Broken World was released during the second Church at the Crossroads conference and was produced in partnership with Red Candle Light for Palestine and Red Letter Christians. The purpose of Church at the Crossroads is “to learn from Palestinian Christians and friends about how the gospel speaks to current realities in Palestine and Israel,” according to the event press release.
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The conference was held Nov. 5-7 in person at Grace Midtown Church in Atlanta, Ga., and was also livestreamed.
“The inaugural conference held last fall in Chicago was launched as a response to two open letters written by Palestinian Christians to the global church,” the press release stated. “Attendees requested further gatherings in their cities,” which led to the conference in Atlanta.
The Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice hosts Church at the Crossroads. It is a Palestinian Christian-led ministry affiliated with Bethlehem Bible College, a leading evangelical seminary in the Arab world.
A free digital copy of Emmanuel in a Broken World is available at https://www.bipj.info/adventdevotional.
Eric Black, executive director/publisher/editor
Baptist Standard
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