Daily Manna · Day 57 · February 26
Eternal Home
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
Paul made tents for a living.
That is worth knowing before reading his metaphor, because it is not decorative. He knew the material, he knew what weather does to it, and he knew that a tent is a structure you put up in the expectation of taking it down. When he calls the body our earthly house of this tabernacle, tabernacle is the tent word, and dissolved is the word for striking a camp: taking down the poles, folding the cloth, moving on.
Against that he sets a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Every term is chosen against the tent. Building, not tent. Not made with hands, which is the phrase Jesus' accusers threw at Him about the temple. Eternal, against a thing that wears out. And the verb is present: we have. Paul never claims one is being prepared. He says it exists.
Read three verses further before drawing any comfort, because he does not let it stay clean. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon. He is not serene about dying. He does not want to be a soul without a body; he wants the better one on. The groaning is in the text, at the same volume as the confidence.
Your knees told you something this year that the calendar has not caught up with, or a scan did, or watching a parent showed you the road slightly early.
So which is it that you actually fear: the tent coming down, or being left without one?
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 57 is A Stream That Holds (Amos 5:24).