To Live Again: An Advent Journey using the Christmas Classic, It’s a Wonderful Life

by Sheila Jacobs

An Advent course for small groups and individuals based on the classic Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life starring James Stewart. With recommended segments of the film to watch on DVD in each session, the book discusses perfect Advent themes such how our lives can change other people’s destinies without our truly knowing it, how God uses everything we’ve been through for his glory, and how what the enemy means for harm, God will turn for good.

112 pages, Paperback

Published October 2, 2018

Reviews

[Dann · Rating 3 out of 5]

To Live Again: An Advent journey using the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life is a fairly well-done guide to the Advent season. The Frank Capra holiday favorite It’s a Wonderful Life is broken down into a series of clips which are accompanied by discussions about various issues and their relation to the themes of Advent. Each discussion ends with a question for thought and there are suggested activities and further bible verse readings. Author Sheila Jacobs takes a pretty traditional view of Christianity and is quite thorough in providing biblical support throughout the book. She also gets rather personal, sharing several stories from her own life, along with her views on the film clips and the theological issues. However, her thoughts, for the most part, aren’t all that insightful; but that’s kind of a byproduct of Jacobs speaking in general terms in order to appeal to a broad audience. Also, the time codes for the film clips seem to differ depending on the format one watches them on. Still, despite whatever problems it has, To Live Again: An Advent journey using the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life is a helpful companion that’s sure to heighten one’s appreciation for the film and the season.

[Clare G · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought provoking advent study