Tuesday, December 2 (Block: Mudbrick) 

Exodus 1:13–14 - So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Exodus 2:23 - 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.

The brick is a symbol of Israel’s burdens, heavy, unstopping, and bitter. Their days were measured with quotas and cruelty. Their identity was shaped by labor and exhaustion. They were being squeezed and pressed down. 

But in this moment something surprising happened! In this bitter burden it awakened their longing for God. 

Sometimes God allows us to feel the weight of life so that we will stop pretending that we can hold it all together. The wilderness of our own hearts is often revealed when the burdens are too heavy to manage alone. 

Our symbol today, a brick, reminds us that hope doesn’t begin when life gets easier, it begins when we realize we cannot rescue ourselves. God often uses circumstances to draw us to Himself. 

The groaning we see in Exodus is not the end of the story, it’s the moment a different story begins. The heavy burdens that God’s people carried direct us to a bigger, far more bitter burden, the burden of sin and brokenness. Jesus calls the weary and the overwhelmed saying: 

Matthew 11:28 - Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

The Savior, born in Bethlehem came into a world crushed under the weight of sin’s burden to bear it himself. Israel’s groaning led them to Moses, our groaning leads us to Jesus, the true and better deliverer. 

What is something that feels heavy right now? What would it look like to trust God to carry it with us?