PRAY

Show me Your glory, I pray.
Exodus 33:18

READ

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp,
far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone
who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each of them, at the entrance of their tents and
watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered
the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the
entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses.
Exodus 33:7-9

Do you have that special place you like to go to meet with God? Not just anywhere will do! While knowing God is everywhere present with us, many people have that set-aside, sacrosanct place, reserved for just God and them. It might be a place in your home, a nearby park, a chapel, or even a hiking trail in the desert. I have a runner friend who goes to a mountaintop near his home to spend time with God. Jesus also had His special places to go and pray.

Famed scientist George Washington Carver designated his laboratory at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute, “God’s Little Workshop.” When faced with an especially difficult problem in the lab, Carver would lock the door to pray, so as he put it, “Only alone can I draw close enough to God to discover His secrets.”

Significantly, we see in today’s Scripture God designating a special place in the Wilderness where people could go to seek the Lord. It was called a “tent of meeting” where “everyone who sought the LORD” could meet with Him. And that means “everyone”, not just priests or Moses, but “everyone”. That is because everyone needs alone time with God. In fact, the deeper one goes into the Wilderness, the more time he or she will need for seeking God.

Notably, the “tent of meeting” was not set up in the middle of camp providing easy access; rather, set up “outside the camp, far off from the camp.” Effort was required for going outside the camp to be alone with God.

In another generation and another place David longed to just be alone with God in His tent: “Let me abide in your tent for ever, find refuge under the shelter of your wings” (Psalm 61:4). David praised the Lord who met with him in His tent, for in the day of trouble “…he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock” (Psalm 27:5b). We find Jesus in the Gospels, after a full day and evening of ministering, rising “early In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).

Times in the Wilderness call for us to seek God in our own ‘tent of meeting’!

REFLECT

• Do you have a “tent of meeting” or a regular place and time for seeking God? If you do, what are those times like for you?

• What steps might you take to establish your own “tent of meeting”?