God commanded Abraham to leave his father’s house in Ur, which was likely a thriving city. He obeyed, even overcoming the temptation to stop the journey halfway at Haran as his father did (Genesis 11:32; Abraham 2:5). When he arrived in Canaan, he pitched his tent near a place called Beth-el, which means “the house of God.” He built an altar and worshipped there. A reasonable person would assume that he would now put down roots, build a house of his own, and establish a foundation for his future.
That future was interrupted by a famine, which led him and his wife Sarai to “sojourn” in Egypt (Genesis 12:10). A sojourn is a temporary stay. He knew that God intended them to live in Canaan, so their time in Egypt was just a brief detour.
Abraham and Sarai returned to Canaan “very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold” (Genesis 13:2). Surely now he would build a permanent residence! His nephew Lot settled in the plain of Jordan, pitching his tent toward the city of Sodom, and eventually living in a house within the city (Genesis 13:11-13; Genesis 19:1-11). But Abraham lived in a tent for the rest of his life (Genesis 13:18; 18:1-10; 24:67).
The only property he permanently claimed was a plot where he and his wife were buried. When he purchased that land, he reminded the prior owners, “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you” (Genesis 23:4). He had lived in Canaan for six decades at that point, and his neighbors were dumbfounded. “Thou art a mighty prince among us,” they replied. “None of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead” (Genesis 23:6). One of them tried to give him some land, but Abraham insisted on paying for it. According to the biblical record, that was the only land he ever owned.
Why would a man who had been promised the entire land of Canaan be so reluctant to possess it? God had assured him multiple times that the land was his. “Walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee” (Genesis 13:17). “I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it” (Genesis 15:7). Yet Abraham’s actions suggest an extraordinary deference to those who currently lived there, a reluctance to claim his own inheritance at their expense, and a willingness to let God’s promises be fulfilled in their own time.
The author of Hebrews explained that Abraham lived in a tent because he was looking forward to a home that only God could provide:
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:
For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Hebrews 11:9-10
At the beginning of the Book of Mormon, Lehi lives in a house in the city of Jerusalem (1 Nephi 1:7). But when God commands him to leave the city, he, like Abraham, trades his home for a temporary shelter. Four times in his record of their migration, Nephi specifically reminds us that his father “dwelt in a tent” (1 Nephi 2:15; 9:1; 10:16; 16:6). He never mentions the parallel with Abraham, but the patriarchal pattern becomes even more pronounced when Nephi assures us that God “did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness. And we did sojourn for the space of many years” (1 Nephi 17:4).
Abraham received heavenly visitors as “he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1). Lehi found the Liahona at the door of his tent as he arose in the morning (1 Nephi 16:10). In both cases, the door of the tent functions as a gateway to revelation.
Both Abraham’s and Lehi’s tents indicated that they inhabited a liminal space, rooted in God’s promises rather than in their current circumstances.
Today, I will practice patient hope. Like Abraham and Lehi, I will view my current circumstances as temporary and focus instead on God’s promises.
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