Temporary Shelter

Temporary Shelter

Women Living In Tents

Read: Leviticus 23:33-43

Linda gritted her teeth as she pulled on the tent peg with all her might. Since going home was her favorite part of a camping trip, she had been glad to stay behind and take down the tent while Paul and the kids got in one last hike. Linda tried to be a good sport, but she just didn’t understand why people would want to spend a week in a dome of thin fabric when they could be in a house with solid walls—and a bathroom. She also didn’t understand how this big pile of material and metal stakes could possibly fit into that small drawstring bag.

Many Bible women knew the experience of living in tents, some of them for most of their lives. One of the yearly observances celebrated by the Israelites was the Festival of Shelters, also known as the Festival of Tabernacles. For seven days, the people lived outside in small temporary shelters, or booths, as a reminder that their ancestors had lived in tents after God rescued them out of Egypt. Some of the women in later generations may have resented the inconvenience of spending a week in an outdoor shelter when they had a house, but God knew the importance of special observances that would help them remember what he had done for them.

Passages in the New Testament compare our earthly bodies to tents. What a perfect word picture to help us remember that our lives here are temporary. No matter what kind of house we live in, we inhabit bodies that are fragile and susceptible to disease, aging, and death. Someday, it will be time to take down our earthly tents and move into permanent homes. God promises to give us new bodies, free from the defects of our old ones. We will be glad to put away our flimsy tents and move into permanent shelter.

We know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands.

2 Corinthians 5:1