THE TENSION OF TENT LIVING
“By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Hebrews 11:8-10
I’m not much of a camper to be honest. I enjoy it from time to time for short periods, but given the option of a place I have to labour to fully deconstruct and pack away once all my muscles are finally relaxed….I’m almost always going to choose the hotel with the swim up bar and free toiletries. And I don’t suspect I am alone on this.
When I do camp, it’s more about the experience… the returning to the simple things, the stripping back, or the close proximity to otherwise largely inaccessible places. I certainly don’t think of it as a long term living arrangement. So when the Lord gave me the directive in May last year to cancel the lease on my apartment and rid myself of all my possessions, I did wonder what He had in mind and whether this upcoming camping expedition had an anticipated end date. Some days I still do…
The story of Abraham has always fascinated me, mostly for the fact that God called him to get up and go before he knew the destination or the longevity of the journey. Even wilder to me is the fact that Abraham packed up and set out walking in response to these extremely vague instructions. And though God had promised him the land and swore that the generations after him would inherit it, he lived in the land of promise as though it was never his…as a foreigner simply passing through.
It’s interesting that even though Isaac and Jacob were heirs of God’s promise to Abraham, they too were accustomed to a transient life of camping. Although we, generations later, are constantly reminded that we serve the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that we too are heirs of the promise…we seem to have a definitive preference for a life of stability and permanency in contrast to our forefathers.
By His own admission, Jesus lived out his calling on the road too. When some expressed their desire to follow Him, He reminded them of the cost…that foxes and birds have a more fixed address than the Son of Man or any true disciple of His… and He always reminded the twelve to travel light.
Even in the years of wandering in the wilderness…as the Lord prepared the Hebrew people for the land of promise, they lived in tents…always moving with the pillars of fire and cloud. And there in the wilderness with them, The Lord also chose to dwell in a tent…the presence of an eternal God in a temporary temple…a prophetic picture of the incarnate Christ - the divine nature of an indestructible life in a temporary form that could be pierced and crushed.
It would appear to me that the Lord has always been cultivating an appetite for eternity in his people, by calling them to embrace the tension of the temporary. Living a life in the now and the natural that believes and embraces that there is more than what is seen and known. He prepares us to inherit an eternal home by calling us to live as Abraham did…as though nothing along the way is ours. Perhaps this is why Paul writes to the Galatians that it is those who share in Abrahams life of faith who are his true descendants…those who are setting out and pitching their tents according to the word of the Lord, believing that he is preparing a place for them that can’t be taken away.
Tent life really determines what you carry. In this season of living out of a suitcase and flying between borders…I need not browse the online furniture sales for a 3 seater sofa to squeeze into my proverbial ‘one man swag’. I’m definitely learning to travel light… and yet, I find my tent remarkably full. Like I said, tent life will bring you in close proximity to things which are otherwise inaccessible. The call to tent living is an invitation to make room for what only God can bring.
In Isaiah 54 the the word of The Lord exhorts the people Israel to prepare for not only the promise of restoration but expansion. “Enlarge the place of your tent, And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; Do not spare; Lengthen your cords, And strengthen your stakes.”
I find it profound that the Lord uses the language and context of a tent when charging them to prepare for a life of expansion and territory taking, where even their descendants would subdue and inherit nations. He didn’t use the language of a palace, a city or a fortress…because tents can be stretched and moved…buildings can’t. In the life of temporary tent dwelling there is a flexibility that the Lord can use for expansion. It’s hard to make room for the more that God wants to bring you into, when you have built yourself a life of concrete, bricks and mortar. Of course I’m not talking in a literal sense…but in the modern Christian life, we have such fixed boundaries of what we are willing to surrender, where we are willing to go…that we simply can’t be stretched or moved…and we have unknowingly fixed the boundaries of what we are able to inherit.
In a world where permanency equals security and security apparently equals freedom, we can ironically lock ourselves up and leave the key in the clutter of the third drawer in our exquisitely built kitchens. In our natural realm of thinking we would never choose a prison as an appropriate living situation, yet so many of us who claim to be people of faith would take a guarantee of 3 meals a day and a very high fence, over the uncertainty of life in the wild. But the wild is where He waits for us…that is the only place we can taste the manna in the morning and drink of the rivers in the desert.
Our love affair with stability and permanency is the same craving that has driven us to drink out of old wineskins for far too long…trying to squeeze every last drop out of the familiar…rather than dare to venture into the unknown. We would rather reinforce the stability of the life we know in the natural…than build a life in the unshakable kingdom.
The Bible makes it clear that the only way to truly enter into His eternal life is by faith…living in a manner that declares that this life is just a pilgrimage, and places a demand on the treasures of our unseen inheritance. A life that sees mountains levelled because you believe the Lord is forging a pathway before you in the wilderness. I’ve realised that God invited Abraham to follow him to a land he did not know, so he would come to know the unknown God. Even when he got there, Abraham lived as a foreigner and an alien…realising that the promise was not in a land…but in God Himself. He is the promise, He is our home. Tent life is where He becomes our walls and our covering, where He defines our boundaries…and our borders. Tent life reminds us daily that we aren’t yet at our permanent destination, that we are on our way to something better, something eternal.
I remind myself of this often when I am tempted to yell out to my faithful Shepherd from the back seat like an impatient toddler asking “are we there yet?” I remember that wherever ‘there’ is…isn’t a place, it’s a person…and He knows what tent living looks like. On this pilgrimage of faith, I continually find myself at a Bethel or a Bethany… He leads me to places of encounter and places of rest, and even places of wrestle. But all the while my eyes remain fixed on home… the one that he is building.
We are all living in tents whether we know it or not. I’ve decided to embrace it to whatever measure I can. When I am no longer living out of a suitcase and I have another earthly home…even then it will be temporary… there will be many more times of flexibility, movement and stretching…and I am determined that my tent will always be filled with the more of heaven rather than the clutter of earth.
I pray that even after seeing promises fulfilled in the land of the living…I would be one who like Abraham and the other heroes of Hebrews 11 - dies IN FAITH… still believing for the more that lies in the unseen; still stretching wide my tent and moving with the fire and the cloud. I will not build myself a sturdy house on the mountain top and lock myself in. I will die in faith…still shouting in the shadow of a mountain that has not yet been moved.