The Tent of Meeting

He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.

—John Ruskin

Moses used to pitch a little tent “outside the camp some distance away” (Exodus 33:7). The Septuagint says it was “far away.” Moses called it the “tent of meeting,” for there, far away from the camp, God met with Moses and spoke to him “face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.”

“Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp,” says the author. They went to hear what Moses had to say about their troubles, and, because Moses had been spending time with God, he always had something worthwhile to say.

The people “stood and worshiped” when Moses went out to this quiet place. One version of the Septuagint, probably relying on oral tradition, adds, “They understood that Moses was ‘away’ when he entered into his tent”—no unscheduled visits, no calls to his cell phone, no faxes, no unnecessary interruptions. They knew the tent was necessary for Moses’ nurture and for theirs. It was an essential part of his calling.

There are hours when we must be present—teaching, preaching, listening, counseling, nurturing, caring for other’s souls, for that is our business. We go here and there imparting truth, hope, vision, and courage to carry on. But life-giving presence depends upon absence—those hours when we’re “away,” when we’re out of the loop, repairing and preparing ourselves through solitude, worship, spiritual reading, study, reflection, and prayer—saving ourselves, as the apostle Paul would say (1 Timothy 4:16).

Absence prepares us to be present in a way we could not otherwise be. “Our way of being most present,” Henri Nouwen wrote in his journal, “requires times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude . . . Our community needs us, but not as a constant presence . . . Our community also needs our creative absence.”

George MacDonald put it this way: “There is a chamber—a chamber in God himself which none can enter but the one, the individual, the particular man. Out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made—to reveal the secret things of the Father.”

Would that all God’s people understood that their shepherds need long hours in God’s presence and would not begrudge their absence or belabor them with busywork that gives them no time to be alone with God. Would that when they saw their pastors go out to the tent of meeting they would rise up and worship and say “amen!”