Monday, December 1 (Block: Tears) 

Exodus 2:23–25 - During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

Advent doesn’t always begin with twinkling lights or cheerful music. If we’re honest, more often than not, it begins with tears. 

Israel groaned under burdens they couldn’t lift, wounds that they couldn’t heal, and a future that was dark and bleak. As their burdens increased they lost the ability to put it into words and simply cried out. It’s in the middle of their cries that hope enters their story. 

God did not ignore their pain. God did not dismiss their tears. God did not wait for them to calm down or feel better or to be more articulate in their prayers.  God Heard. God Remembered. God Saw. God Knew. 

Tears are not signs of spiritual weakness, they are a cry to a heavenly Father who is filled with compassion. Advent reminds us that God’s rescue begins long before the miracles, it happens in the middle of the groaning. 

Here’s the wonderful thing! Just as God heard Israel’s cries in Egypt. He heard humanity’s deeper groaning under sin. The birth of Jesus is foreshadowed in the burning bush! God comes down, in the flesh, to rescue us! Hear Zechariah’s certainty as he talks about the one who his son would announce. 

Luke 1:67–79 - And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Where do we need God’s help right now? How does knowing He hears us change how we walk through waiting?