After David had constructed buildings for himself in the City of David, he prepared a place for the ark of God and pitched a tent for it. – 1 Chronicles 15:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 14, 2019): 1 Chronicles 15 

Robyn Schneider in “Extraordinary Means” writes that “Being temporary doesn't make something matter any less, because the point isn't for how long, the point is that it happened.” “Temporary” is a misleading word because it hints at a future that we cannot really see. What is temporary fully occupies our now, and that is all that matters. For example, I know of a church that built a temporary worship center in the mid-nineteen-sixties. The plan was that the permanent worship center would occupy the empty lot next door, and the temporary worship center would be given rebirth as the education wing. More than fifty years later, the church continues to meet in the temporary worship center, and the lot next door remains empty. And the plans for a new Worship Center still exists, but now the temporary Worship Center would be slated for destruction.

Maybe another way of thinking about it is that everything is temporary. There is nothing that we buy or we build that is permanent. All that really changes is the length of time that we might expect it to last. Today, and all of the objects that we possess at this moment, will pass away into nothingness sooner than we might want to believe. Even the land that we build on is temporary and changing.  Fifty or a hundred years from now, you may not even recognize the place where you grew up.

David builds a tent for the Ark of the Covenant. The Tabernacle of Moses still resides at Gibeon, but David wants the Ark in Jerusalem. So he builds a tent, a temporary structure, made to house the holiest item that Israel possessed. The question of why a tent was built for the Ark rather than having the Tabernacle brought Jerusalem is one that we still struggle over. We understand that David wanted to unify all of Israel, both politically and religiously, under one banner in Jerusalem. David might have thought that if the Tabernacle was moved to Jerusalem, there might be less impetus to build a Temple there. Or it might be that David simply had already dismissed the Tabernacle and its role in religious life as part of the past. The tent was new, even if it was still temporary. Or it might be that the politics of moving the Tabernacle were significant, something only worth wading through in instances of disaster. Shiloh had been the first resting place of Tabernacle, but it was moved, likely just before the city of Shiloh was reduced to ruins. (It is possible, although disputed by some, that Shiloh was destroyed by the Philistines. The Bible is silent on what happened at Shiloh, but Jeremiah confirms that the city was reduced to ruins.) From Shiloh, the Tabernacle moved to Nob, but the murder of the priests there by Saul necessitated another move, this time to Gibeon. There was no overwhelming reason, other than possibly the desire of the King, to move the Tabernacle once more.

So David built a tent, a temporary dwelling, for the Ark of the Covenant. But ultimately the fact that is was temporary wasn’t as important as the fact that it existed, and would house the Ark of God into the next generation.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Samuel 7