Birth Pains

Performance of "Missing the Messiah"
Performance of “Missing the Messiah”

Thanksgiving and Christmas come wrapped in tradition. Turkey with all the trimmings. Family, fun, and football. Christmas trees, cookies, and caroling. We celebrate in different ways, but we all long for meaningful memories and traces of the transcendent.

 Is there a way to find that? Especially when our special ways of celebration get interrupted by unexpected life changes. 

Giving birth to our son on Christmas Eve changed our plans—and our lives—significantly. But it also gave me a much deeper appreciation of what really happened that first Christmas night. 

“Birth Pains” is my gift to you. May it bring hope and comfort to those going through hard times. God knows and cares. 

Birth Pains

Do we really think Emmanuel
slid silently into our world
on a quiet, peaceful night?

My firstborn came
crying, kicking, gasping for air
as I shivered and shook,
exhausted from panting, pushing, praying.

Was Christ’s coming less labored?

Or do we sterilize the stable,
sentimentalize the saga,
and ceremonialize the incarnation
to minimize the birth pains
Father, mother, and baby suffered as
God stripped Himself of glory that night . . .
giving, grieving, groaning
to be one with us . . .
so we could be one with Him?

 

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16, NKJV. God’s birth pains offer us eternal  life. There is no greater gift!

Gabriel’s Strange Missions to Earthlings

Conversations with Gabriella is one of my favorite scripts! Why? Gabriella. She’s a delightful,
but somewhat daft young angel, who is distressed by Gabriel’s strange missions to Earthlings.
Why should the great Gabriel leave Heaven to deliver messages to Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and
a few shepherds?Christmas Angel

You may know the story, but Gabriella sure didn’t. And neither do many of your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. Why not plan a Christmas tea, holiday luncheon, or dinner drama that shares God’s incredible plan of redemption in a fun setting?

Conversations with Gabriella features four five-minute sections separated by music. It can be performed as readers theater or staged with scenery, costumes, props, and flair. The musical selections between sections give a sense of time passing and enhance the performance.

Conversations with Gabriella is FREE from now until October 16. Why not take advantage of this opportunity to plan a special Christmas outreach in your community? You’ll find great joy in sharing the true meaning of Christmas.

Bring the Miracle to Life

GabriellaBring the miracle of Christmas to life this year! Conversations with Gabriella takes you above the scenes where you’ll experience Christmas from a fledgling angel’s viewpoint as she quizzes Gabriel about his secret missions to earth.

Designed to delight as it highlights God’s incredible plan for redemption, this four-part drama offers fresh insights on God’s mysterious interactions with Zachariah, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds. It can be staged in five-minute segments each week in Advent or used as a stand-alone program for a memorable outreach event.

Although it can be staged as a delightful 30-45 minute program when combined with musical interludes, it can also be performed effectively as readers theater with simple staging and passionate reading. Take a look at the script and let your artistic creativity imagine how you could bring Conversations with Gabriella to life this Christmas season. It has the potential to penetrate hearts and change lives in a generation where many are obsessed with the supernatural but clueless about what it means to know the living God.

And if you don’t think Conversations with Gabriella is right for your situation, please check out the other monologues and two-piece dramas available for Christmas. They’re a bargain at 50% off!

Free Christmas Script!

Gift wrapped in red and green paper

God’s free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ is the ultimate, indescribable gift that supersedes all materialistic must-buy gadgets and goodies that masquerade as essentials in the quest for significance.

So, how do we peel back the glitter, glitz, and propaganda that mask the truth so that people encounter the living Lord and experience His redemption?

What does that for you? What have you found that does that for others?

For me, I love to pair Christian drama and music together. I find they serve as powerful soul openers that touch and transform. Do they do that for you?

If so, please take a look at the Christmas monologues and two-voice drama sketches in the AlphaStar collection at www.AlphaStarDrama.com. Perhaps you’ll find one that speaks to you or that you can use in some special way this Christmas. If you do, use the code “CHRISTMAS14” at checkout, and it will be free. This gift is available once per customer between October 17 and December 25. Scripts included in this offer are “Missing the Messiah,” “Wise Men in King Herod’s Court,” “You Ever Met a Man Like Joseph?” and “Glory Night.”

If you have ideas about using drama and/or music effectively, please drop us a note or share a picture on the Comment Page or on Facebook. That would be a gift we’d cherish!

CHRISTMAS EUCHARISTEO

Eucharisteo? Does that sound like Greek to you? Well, no wonder. It is Greek! And it’s my favorite new word for the year, first encountered in Ann Voscamp’s One Thousand Gifts, an engaging and energetic invitation to find joy by embracing everyday life with gratitude for God’s gifts of grace.

I’m fascinated by the beauty of the word as well as its meaning. Eucharisteo is used 37 times in the New Testament and is translated “thank” or “giving thanks” in English. That alone makes it appropriate to connect with Christmas in a year when Thanksgiving and Christmas nearly bump into each other.

But eucharisteo encompasses so much more. It grows out of the root word, charis, which means grace, and leads to chara, a spinoff from charis which means joy. Gratitude, grace and joy? What rich gifts!

I adopted Ann’s challenge to watch for and write down God’s simple gifts of grace. I’m up to 727 journal entries of simple blessings like morning dewdrops, Nathaniel’s two-year-old sparkle, and a serendipitous rendezvous with a friend whose photography-loving niece moved to town just when I was looking for a photographer for my parents’ 70th anniversary party. What priceless gifts that require neither ribbons nor dusting!

Our increasingly materialist society, however, substitutes consumer spending as the bottom line by which to measure the success of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Work and family demands in our fast-paced, instant internet world also rush and stress us, leaving us devoid of eucharisteo.

Those who lived in Bethlehem two thousand years ago had none of the modern conveniences that both simplify and complicate our lives. We may think that eucharisteo was easier for them, but they also faced frustrations and complications. Especially during the census that required them to return to the town of their birth. No airplanes. No trains. No cars. No way to call ahead for reservations. No room for Mary and Joseph after their long journey even though Mary was about to give birth to the Son of God.

It’s easy to look back at that incredible night and Tsk! Tsk! the people who failed to recognize the miracle taking place in their midst. But what if we had been there? Would we have realized what was happening?

1 Corinthians 10:11 tells us that the events in Scripture serve as examples to help us live wisely. AlphaStar Drama offers drama sketches that invite you to get to know the characters of Christmas. To slip into their skins and see life as they did. To experience their fears and perplexities and to wake up to the ways God worked in their lives and wants to work in ours.

Awareness. Fresh insights. A new alertness to God. Are they not steps toward experiencing eucharisteo?

Enjoy the scripts. Share them with others. And let me know if they add eucharisteo–gratitude, grace, and joy– to your Christmas celebration. That would be an eucharisteo entry for me!