When I was a young boy in Ohio, we lived near several construction sites. Inspired by them, my friends and I gathered leftover scraps to build a fort. Borrowing tools from our parents, we hauled wood and spent days trying to make our material serve our purposes. It was fun, but our attempts were poor reflections of the well-constructed buildings around us. They didn’t last long.

In Genesis 11, we encounter the first recorded building project. “Let us build ourselves a city,” said the people, “with a tower that reaches to the heavens” (v. 4). A big problem with this effort was that the people did it to “make a name for ourselves” (v. 4).

This has been a recurring issue for humans; we build monuments to ourselves and our achievements. Later in the biblical narrative this story is contrasted with Solomon’s motivation for building God’s temple: “I intend, therefore, to build a temple for the Name of the Lord my God” (1 Kings 5:5).

Solomon understood that what he built needed to point to God and not himself. This was such an important lesson that he even wrote a psalm about it. Psalm 127 opens with “unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (v. 1). Like my childhood fort-building, what we build will not last, but God’s name and what we do for Him has lasting significance.