Meet and Greet

Exodus 33: 7-11

So Moses would commonly pitch a tent some distance outside of the camp and called it the "tent of meeting."  If someone had a question for God- this was the place for it.  The text is a little ambiguous about how it worked, but it seems to me that people would bring their questions or requests to Moses and then he would meet with God.

When Moses would approach the tent, everyone would come out of their own tents and watch him until he went inside.  When he went inside, a pillar of cloud would come down and stay outside the entrance while God and Moses talked inside.  In a cartoon, this would be God's ride back into heaven.  Outside of camp, it seems like it served the purpose of a "do not disturb" or an "occupied" sign.  

While the conversation was going on, (when they saw the cloud) they would all stand at the entrances of their own tents and worship.  Moses and the LORD would speak "face to face, as a man speaks with his friend."

This is the part of this short passage that resonates the most with me.  It seems that God has always longed for a relationship with His creation.  Is that our purpose?  Is this the whole point of God creating us in the first place?  So he can come to our tent of meeting and befriend us.

It's interesting to think of God and Moses just chatting.  Sitting down over the Isreali equivalent of a cup of coffee and shooting the breeze while the sounds of worship drift in through the tent.  And maybe this scene can help us understand Moses' tendency to overstep his bounds.  Maybe he felt so at ease with God, so comfortable, so friendly, that he started to forget who we was- and who we was in comparison to his God.

And maybe God wants the same from us.  Not a flippant sense of entitlement, but a relationship so deep, so close, so trusting, that we think of God less as judge and jury, but more as a dear friend, as loving family, as a loved one whose visit warrants celebration.

The section ends noting that Moses' assistant Joshua stayed in the tent after Moses would go back to camp.