To live at the time of a building boom is exciting! House plans are spread out on the coffee table like an evening paper. Mealtimes are interspersed with comments on a new idea. Caterpillars, cement trucks, carpenters, and utility people make their noisy way to and from the building sites. At every new hole in the ground or downtown construction site, people ask, "What's going up here?" King David lived at such a time. To build was in his blood. The text before us gives three distinct ideas about building. Each uses the term "house," but in a different way. We shall deal, then, with a house, a House, and a house.

1. A house.

David had, probably for the first time, his own wood and masonry home. It became a symbol, for himself and for his people, of a nation at the end of war. It spoke of se…