Beginning of the End - Ellen G. White

At the sight of the ark, for a brief moment joy and hope thrilled
the heart of David, but soon other thoughts came. The glory of God
and the good of his people were to be the most important in his
mind, for he was the appointed ruler of God's heritage. God had said
of Jerusalem, "This is my resting place" (Psalm 132:14), and neither
priest nor king had a right to remove the symbol of His presence
from the city. And David's great sin was always in his memory. It
was not his place to remove from the nation's capital the sacred
statutes that represented the will of their divine Sovereign, the
constitution of the realm and the foundation of its prosperity.
He commanded Zadok, "'Carry the ark of God back into the
city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me back
and show me both it and His dwelling place. But if He says thus: "I
have no delight in you," here I am, let Him do to me as seems good
to Him.'"
When All Looks Dark, David Prays
As the priests turned back toward Jerusalem, a deep shadow
fell over the people with David. Their king a fugitive, themselves
outcasts, forsaken even by the ark of God--the future was dark! "So
David went up by the Ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he
went up; and he had his head covered and went barefoot. And all the
people who were with him covered their heads and went up,
weeping as they went up. Then someone told David, saying,
'Ahithophel is among the conspirators with Absalom.'" Again David
was forced to recognize the results of his own sin. The defection of
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