Blogs: What are you building?: Blogs: What are you building?
Blogs: What are you building?
Date Added: 01/09/2026 @ 1:00pm
Back at the beginning of the summer, in the first heatwave - can you even remember the first heatwave? - I was on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. One of the things we did was to visit some of the abbey buildings which pepper the area and are a testament to early Celtic Christianity. In that area abbeys were mainly built by the Cistercians. The Cistercian monks were highly organised and built some wonderful buildings which were not only used for worship in a daily (and demanding) rhythm of prayers and praise, but served the local community, modelling sacrificial service and using their buildings as hospitals, sanctuaries, places of safety, places of learning, farms, apothecaries etc. The buildings and the people who worked in them were awe inspiring beacons of hope dominating the landscape.
I suspect they found it hard to imagine that the whim of one king, hundreds of miles away in London, could shut them down and render them and those who served in them, as worthless. A salutary lesson.
All of this led me to reflect on a couple of things. People who built abbeys and cathedrals back in the day, never expected to see the finished result. They just knew that they were doing something which was much greater than them. We live in an age when we expect to see the end result and probably demand that it is something we like! Those early ecclesiastical builders had no idea what society would be like when the building was finished. But they kept going. They were building for the glory of God, not for themselves and for the people of the future. With that in mind, I have been wondering what am I building in my life, in the life of my family, my community and in our churches, to the glory of God? That’s been part of my summer soul work!
I have just read a story which takes place in France in the Middle Ages...
A traveller was journeying along the road when he came upon a great deal of activity. There was a building site. The traveller stopped to watch the stone cutters. They were hard at work.
‘What are you doing?’ the traveller asked one of them.
The man scowled. He was not happy. ‘I’m cutting these huge bits of rock but look at the tools I’ve been given! They are hardly suitable. I shape the rocks and put them back together! Not only are my tools useless – it’s so boring! I’m sweating, my back hurts. I hate this job!’
The traveller moved on. He came across another worker. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ said the second man, ‘I do what I’m told! I’ve got a family at home to feed, so come here each day, and I shape the rock. It’s boring, but it helps feed my family, and that’s what I want.’
The traveller walked on and came across a third man. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
The third man stopped. He looked at the traveller and smiled. His eyes were full of tears and he pointed to the sky. ‘I,’ he said with a look or wonder and joy in his face, ‘I am building a cathedral!’
May we all be able to see the bigger picture and experience the same joy and wonder as the last stone cutter!
With my love and prayers,
Steph
