“[David] said to the prophet Nathan,
“See now, I am living in a house of cedar,
but the ark of God stays in a tent.”  – II Samuel 7:2 

King David wants to do something beautiful for God.

David is settled in Jerusalem, the city of David. It is a time of peace.
He built a beautiful home for himself.
Perhaps it was gratitude, or perhaps it was guilt
but David wants to build a house for the Ark of God.

The Ark is a kind of chest carried by the people of God
when they moved through the desert and into the promised land.
It held holy, sacred things.
Now that they were settled, the Ark is kept in a tent.

King David wants to build a fancy house for it. He tells Nathan.
Nathan is a prophet. Nathan says, “Go for it.”
“Do whatever you have in mind.”

But even prophets get it wrong.
That night Nathan had a dream.
God said “No!”
And like many dreams (even today)
Nathan’s dream held a pun. 

It’s a pun on the word “house.”
God doesn’t want to be contained in a house;
God wants David’s house, his lineage, to contain God.

Our heart is God’s house.
There is goodness at our core, a divine imprint.
Love is an echo. Always sounding.
And we are always trying to find our way home.
That’s the beauty of the human spiritual journey.

Solomon, David’s son, eventually builds a House for God.
And generations have built houses for God.
But this is not where God is.

Our heart is home to the Divine.