Like many people, this summer my family and I had a holiday which involved camping. One of the joys of camping is sitting outside with a drink watching the world go by, and over the week we saw the campsite constantly changing as people came and went. Some people were staying for two or three weeks, others for a few days and some just for one night. But no matter how long we were staying for, for all of us this was a temporary home. It is possibly this knowledge that made the short trek to the toilet block in the driving rain bearable!
By camping we were all experiencing a little of what a nomadic lifestyle is like, and more so for those who just stopped for the night, a resting place on their journey to somewhere else. For those who choose this way of living it can be a joy, even a release from the materialism and consumerism of society. But for those, such as refugees or the homeless, who have this life forced upon them it can be demoralising and dehumanising.
For the Israelites in the Old Testament the experience of being a nomadic people was deeply ingrained in their identity. They descended from Abraham who left his home in Ur in what is now south eastern Iraq, travelled to Harran, on what is now the southern border of Turkey, and was called by God to leave there to go to 'The Promised Land' of Canaan, now Israel. Abraham's grandson, Jacob, then took his family to Egypt to join his son Joseph, who was by then the Prime Minister of Egypt. The family stayed there and grew in number, were enslaved by the Pharaoh and eventually left Egypt led by Moses. Their re-entry to the Promised Land was delayed because they didn't trust God (Numbers 14) and so their punishment was to wander in the desert for forty years. And even when they were to re-enter the Promised Land, God commanded them “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers” (Leviticus 25:23).
The wanderings in the wilderness meant that the Israelites got used to living in tents, but the remarkable thing about this is that God chose to join them in their camp. He told Moses “let them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8), and then gave instructions on how to build the tent. When it was finished, the glory of the Lord filled it and “In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out – until the day it lifted” (Exodus 40:36-37). God dwelt with his people to guide them and so they could meet with him.
In describing the coming of Jesus, the gospel writer John says that the “Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word translated 'made his dwelling' literally means 'encamped' or 'pitched his tent'. In Jesus we see the fulfilment of God's promise to live with and amongst his people and to guide us as we travel through life.
