King David had time to reflect on things after his palace was built and God had given him “rest from all his enemies around him.” Maybe he felt a tinge of shame that the home of God’s ark of the covenant was merely a tent.

Through the prophet Nathan, though, God revealed that he had bigger plans to share with his servant.

David’s (and our) plans are often much too small. God told Nathan that nothing in the heavens above or on the earth below could be big enough to house the Lord. He is the God who moves with his people wherever they might go, wherever they might be. Actually, he is the God who is everywhere at once. How could a mere building be the Lord’s residence?

In the book Leap Over the Wall, Eugene Peterson notes that God is the first-person subject of 23 verbs in the message that he gave Nathan to share with David. The Lord is the active, working, speaking, being, promising, establishing, eternal God who is faithful forever.

God promised that his love would never leave David. The Lord’s promise to be the father of his offspring would be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ as the heir to David’s throne. The statement “I will be his father, and he will be my son” set the stage for the coming of Jesus as God’s Son, our Savior. That’s real love.