2018 Worship Guide

Page 22 2018 Worship Guide LINCOLN DAILY NEWS Wednesday, December 5, 2018 And then Jesus shows up [MacKerricher State Park] CONTINUE H ave you ever heard of Glass Beach? It’s in California, 120 miles north of San Francisco. It is literally a beach covered in small multi-colored glass pebbles. The myth is that sea glass is “Mermaid Tears.” The story goes that every time a sailor is lost at sea, a Mermaid cries and her tears wash up on shore as glass. But this glass covered beach was created by people. Time and the pounding surf have corrected one of man’s most careless mistakes. After the GREAT QUAKE of 1906 that devastated San Francisco, there was no place to dump all of the building debris. So the townspeople chose to clear the rubble by dumping it in the ocean, thinking it would wash away. Much to their surprise, it didn’t. For years and years, it just built up until they decided to burn it. But that didn’t work either. Dumping continued there until, believe it or not, the mid-1960’s. Now, many years later, nature has cleansed and reclaimed this beach. Years of pounding waves and tidal action have crushed, rounded and polished tons of glass and piled it there. From trash to treasure. Beauty from a dump. What nature has done by accident, God does regularly. God would use some pretty messed up, broken, and unnoticed people to bring about the miracle of Christ birth. Just one look at Jesus’ genealogy will shock you. No perfect people there. Nothing but pain and sorrow and failure and brokenness and sin. And then Jesus shows up. Maybe this wasn’t your best year. Maybe it is marked with a lot of pain. You’ve tried to bury your feelings but you know you can’t. You’ve