hope means "travel light"

My favorite thing about camping, I'm pretty sure, is having an excuse to be stinky and dirty. That's why you don't need to bring many clothes. Or even shampoo. You just wear the same thing all the time. Because you can.

So I pack my favorite ugly camping shirt -- and wear it to death. I always intend to wear more clothes, but ... it just doesn't work out. And since most the clothes I would bring came back clean, I just stopped packing so many.

That's my other favorite thing about camping: seeing how I can live happily with so much less. I don't know I would be quite so happy two weeks in, but to think that we can distill our family's living essentials into the back of our mini van...when we normally fill up a big house...well, that just fascinating.

Dirtiness and a minimal lifestyle had to have been part of the wilderness camping experience for the Israelites leaving Egypt. Probably not so much the fascination and appreciation of those elements. But you only accumulate and spread out when you settle...when you're on a journey, you only take what you can't live without.

It must have gotten old. The only thing that must have kept them going was hope.

Hope depends on a promise. And the Israelites had one. They were told there was a special place waiting for them, a land that was going to be just perfect for them. And they were on their way there. Albeit, a kind of round-about way, but still. There was a reason they weren't settling; they knew something better was up ahead.

We have something better up ahead, too. We're also on our way to the Promised Land.

Hebrews 11 talks about people who live with this mindset their whole lives: "These all died....having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland...they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one...."

These words always grab me. I'm so drawn to the idea of a life of a pilgrim, a traveler...but then I look around me. I rather think it would sooner be said "looks like she made herself at home" than, "clearly, she was seeking a homeland".

But that being the case, I don't know it'd do any good to busy myself looking more traveler-like. What I need to do is remember the promise. When the promise, my hope, is firmly fixed, then traveling will happen.

I begin by "fixing [my] eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith". It is him who gives the promise, gives the hope, that will loosen the stiff muscles of apathy and get these legs moving.