The Tent Where God Came to Stay

Do you know what God said to Moses, up on the mountain, in the middle of all that thunder and cloud?

He was not asking for a throne, or a tall, far-away tower that nobody could reach. He asked for a tent.

"Make me a tent," he said. "Make me a place. I want to come and live with them."

God's people were walking through the wilderness. A wide, empty place. Sand and rock and a sky so big it could make you feel small, and a little bit lonely. Only days before, they had watched God come down on the mountain in fire and smoke, and they had stood far back behind the line, wishing they could come close. God knew their hearts. He knew they were wondering, deep down, the same thing you sometimes wonder.

Is God really near? Is he close enough to find?

So God gave them careful, loving directions. Boards of acacia wood. Curtains of blue and purple and deep, deep red. Loops and clasps of gold. A golden lampstand shaped like an almond tree in bloom, so a warm light would always be glowing. A table with bread on it, like a place set for supper. And right in the very middle, behind a curtain, a golden box where God would meet his people.

It was beautiful. And God did not tell them to build it way out at the edge of the camp, where nobody went.

He told them to put it in the MIDDLE.

Right in the center of all the tents. So that wherever a child lay down to sleep, she could look out and know: "God's tent is just over there. God lives close. God did not stay on the mountain that shook with fire. He came down to be with us."

And when it was all finished, a cloud came down and filled the tent. A bright, soft glory, settling in like someone coming home. God moved in. The God who made the stars folded himself into a small cloth house, in the middle of a dusty camp, just to be near the people he loved.

When they walked, the cloud went up, and they followed. When they stopped, the cloud came down, and they rested. God went where they went. God stayed where they stayed.

But a tent, you know, is only cloth. And a curtain still hung between the people and the place where God's glory shone. They could be near. They could not yet come all the way in.

So even while they slept beside that glowing tent, a little ache was waiting in the dark.

If only the curtain could open.
If only God could come even closer than this.

He was already planning to.

Many years later, on a night with a star over it, God did the very thing the tent had been promising all along. He did not come in a cloud, or behind a curtain, or in cloth and gold.

He came in skin, with a baby's small fingers and a body just like yours. The Word became a person, the Bible says, and moved in to stay among us. God, come close. Not in the middle of the camp now, but in the middle of us, close enough to hold.

The tent had been pointing to him the whole time.