The Tent Makes The City Precious

Heb 11:9  By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
 
Heb 11:10  For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

First, then, it is the tent which makes the city precious. We see at a glance that it was so with Abraham.

It was the very insecurity of that tent-life, the isolation of it and its thousand perils, that made the dream of a city so infinitely sweet.

Had Abraham spent ail his days within strong wails he would never have known the power of that ideal.

Mingling with other men in crowded thoroughfares and sharing in the security of numbers, life would have been too rich, too full, too safe, to leave any place or power for this vision.

But life in the tent left room and verge enough. What could be frailer than that covering of skin which shook and flapped at every wandering breeze?

How it strained when the blast from the hills swept down on it! How the lashing rain in the dark night would soak it!

It is in such surroundings, perilous, lonely, comfortless, that men begin to dream about a city.

That is the meaning of GOD'S treatment of Abraham. That is why GOD housed him in a tent.

It was not to harden him nor yet to crush his pride; it was to waken him to the worth of the ideal.

It took the tent so fragile and unstable, so lightly rooted, so easily overswept, to make GOD'S promise and prospect of a city a very precious thing to Abraham.

I cannot help but think that as GOD dealt with Abraham, so does He deal in providence with us all. 

There is a flood of light poured on life's darker aspects for me when I remember the city and the tent. 

After all, the important thing is not what we live in; the supremely important thing is what we look for.

It is not my actual achievement which is vital; it is the purpose, the aim, the direction of my life.

If life is to be redeemed from sense and time and brought under the powers that are eternal, the eyes must be opened somehow to GOD'S city.

And how shall I open them? says the Almighty. How shall I make the unseen city precious?

The answer to that lies in the tent of Abraham - so insecure, so perilous and so frail.

From which I learn that much of life's harder discipline, and many a dark hour that men are called to, is given to humanity by Abraham's GOD that hearts may begin to hunger for the city.


~George H. Morrison~