Tents or Houses

     Moses had just returned with the 10 Commandments and it was time to worship. There was only one problem, there wasn't anywhere to do it. That is when God gave very detailed plans for what would become the tabernacle. Now if you want to see (technically read) the plans, you can find them in Exodus 25 and 26. If you do go and read that, you will find that everything is designed to be portable. All of the furnishings were designed to be easily carried and the tabernacle itself was really just a big tent. Why portable? They were never meant to be there very long. This was just a time of preparing them for what was to come; for a time when they could build a permanent structure to worship in.

     I think today we have a bad habit of building houses where God wants us to put up a tent. We linger too long in places where we should only be passing through; in places where we have things to learn to prepare us for what is to come. If you find yourself in a period of preparation, don't build a house there. Put up your tent, stay until it is time to move on to where you are meant to go and then move on. Don't spend your life somewhere you weren't meant to stay simply because you built a house instead of putting up a tent. Had Moses built a temple where they were they would never had moved on to the Promised Land. That time in the wilderness taught many important lessons in how to be a people, a people called by God, but it wasn't where they were destined to stay. You may be "in the wilderness" right now, but you aren't destined to stay there. Don't build a house and live there, put up a tent.