The Camping Trips That Taught Me Everything
My dad and I were spectacularly bad at camping. Every other trip, we’d wake up soaking wet because the tent leaked, or we’d pitched it in a low spot that turned into a puddle overnight.
I remember one trip when I was about nine years old. We woke at 2 AM to water pooling under our sleeping bags. We spent the next hour in the dark, flashlights tucked under our chins, trying to move everything to higher ground and jerry-rigging the tarp with bungee cords and pure stubbornness. We were frustrated, cold, and laughing at how ridiculous it all was.
Here’s the thing: my dad and I aren’t super close. We see the world differently, and that’s created distance over the years. But in that moment—soaking wet, fighting with a tarp at 2 AM, completely failing at something we’d tried to plan for—we were just together. I’d give almost anything for one more failed camping trip with him now.
Because those wet sleeping bags and frustrated laughter? That was us being present with each other. That was the moment, even when our tent-building abilities failed us completely.
Peter’s Panic on the Mountain
I thought about those leaky tents this week when I read the story of the Transfiguration in Matthew 17. When I got to verse 4, I literally laughed out loud.
Peter does the exact same thing.
Faced with the most glorious, terrifying moment of his life—Jesus literally glowing with divine light, Moses and Elijah appearing, God’s voice about to boom from heaven—Peter defaults to practical mode: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three tents here.”
Three tents! Where’s he even getting the materials? The logistics alone are absurd.
But it’s what we do when we’re overwhelmed, isn’t it? We try to do something. Build something. Preserve the moment. Control what we can control when everything else feels too big, too holy to just… receive.
Why We Build Tents for God’s Glory
Let’s look at what’s actually happening on this mountain, because context matters.
Just six days earlier in Matthew 16, Jesus told his disciples he was going to suffer and die. Peter rejected this idea completely: “God forbid it, Lord!” Now they’re on a mountaintop where Jesus is transformed right in front of them—glowing, radiant, talking with Moses and Elijah about his departure.
This is God giving the disciples one more blaze of glory before the hard road to Jerusalem begins.
Peter wants to build shelters for that glory. Maybe he’s thinking of the Festival of Booths. Maybe he’s just panicking and trying to be helpful. Either way, he defaults to tent-building.
Then God interrupts. Cloud. Voice. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.”
Not “build for him.” Not “preserve this moment.” Listen.
The Tents We’re Still Building
We are tent builders by nature. We try to:
- Build safe spaces for God’s presence
- Hold on to mountaintop experiences
- Protect ourselves from coming storms
- Construct our own attempts at righteousness
Sometimes the tents are literal—programs, buildings, perfectly curated spiritual practices. Sometimes they’re our belief that if we just pray enough, serve enough, or do good enough, we can protect ourselves and those we love from suffering.
Here’s the truth: our tents leak. They always have.
Maybe your tent is consuming enough Christian content—reading all the right books, listening to all the right podcasts—because if you consume enough good theology, maybe you’ll finally get your faith figured out.
Or maybe it’s therapy and self-work. If you heal enough, process enough, maybe you can finally protect yourself from getting hurt again. (Therapy is good. Healing is good. But self-improvement isn’t salvation.)
Maybe your tent is staying useful. Staying so needed that you never have to wonder if you matter.
Or maybe it’s having all the right answers for your kids’ questions about faith, believing that if you can explain God well enough, you can protect them from spiritual harm.
The Comfort That Actually Holds
Here’s what the Transfiguration teaches us as we approach Lent: God doesn’t need our leaky tents.
Jesus doesn’t stay captured on the mountaintop. In verse seven—something only Matthew tells us—Jesus comes to the terrified disciples and touches them. He’s not some distant glowing figure to be preserved under glass. He’s present, real, and walking with them.
He says, “Get up. Don’t be afraid.”
The comfort the disciples need isn’t in what they build. It’s in who Jesus is and where he’s going. He’s heading to the cross. He’s entering into human suffering. That’s where God’s glory actually lives—not in our attempts to capture it, but in God’s willingness to enter our soaking-wet, broken, failing reality and still say, “I’m with you.”
Your Invitation This Lent
As Ash Wednesday approaches, we’ll receive ashes and hear words we can’t build a tent around: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” All our careful constructions? Dust.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Those wet mornings in leaky tents with my dad weren’t failures. They were communion. The tent might have failed, but the relationship didn’t.
If the disciples had built those three shelters on the mountain, they would have leaked too. But Jesus didn’t need them. He came down the mountain, touched the disciples, and in the very next scene, healed a boy with epilepsy.
Glory doesn’t stay on the mountain. It comes down into the mess.
Stop trying so hard to build shelter for God. Let God be your shelter.
Your tents will leak. Mine will too. But the One who blazed with glory on that mountain is the same One who walks with us through every storm, every failure, every wilderness. And that—not what we build, but who walks with us—that’s the shelter that holds.
Get up. Don’t be afraid. He’s with you. That’s enough.
Share this post with someone who needs to hear that God’s presence doesn’t depend on what we build—but on who walks with us through it all.
