The Cabin That Became a Cathedral

In 1956, a young carpenter named Earl Palmer saved up enough money to buy land outside Asheville, North Carolina. He had one dream: build a small cabin where his family could gather for Thanksgiving. He drew the plans himself on graph paper, framed the walls with his own hands, and finished it just before the first frost.

Earl never imagined what would happen next. His children grew up in that cabin. His grandchildren learned to fish in the creek behind it. One grandson, moved by decades of family prayers spoken around that knotty pine table, became a pastor and planted a church in Asheville that now serves three thousand people. The cabin still stands, but what Earl built with his hands turned out to be far smaller than what God built through his faithfulness.

This is the heartbeat of God's promise to David. David wanted to build a house for the Lord — a temple of cedar and stone. But the Almighty reversed the blueprint entirely. "I will establish a house for you," God declared. Not a structure of timber, but a dynasty. Not a building, but a bloodline that would stretch across centuries and culminate in the eternal reign of Christ.

We make our small, earnest plans. We pick up our hammers. But God, the master builder, is always constructing something far grander through our ordinary faithfulness — a legacy we cannot yet see.