There was a great story circling Facebook a few months ago.

You can picture her easily. She is a mom with a college degree who has chosen to stay home with her posse of small children. A few years ago, her life was characterized by lectures and long discussions over cups of strong coffee. She wrote and read and analyzed and penned compelling reviews of her favorite books.

Now she feels lucky when she is able to string two coherent thoughts together. If she bothered to update her Goodreads account, it would list the titles of books that are less than ten pages long and made of cardboard. But she wouldn’t trade her new life for anything in the world.

Anyway, one day this mom’s friend returns from a fabulous tour of Europe. And after sharing with their group of friends some of the highlights of her trip, she pulls out a gift for her stay-at-home friend. The giftwrap and ribbon fall away to reveal a coffeetable book richly illustrated with photos of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe.

The friend explains that the young mom is like a cathedral builder. The days are long, and sometimes it’s hard to see what you’re building. But at the end of a lifetime there will be some thing beautiful; something bigger than yourself that you have helped to shape.

I really resonated with that story. I think it is a helpful reminder not only to mothers of young children, but to any of us who are chipping away daily at tasks that are both mundane and profound–mundane up close, profound when viewed from a distance. We spend our hours in the care and nurture of small people or aged people or students or coworkers or each other, iron sharpening iron, sometimes in minute detail. We may have a life goal of becoming more like Christ, watching our own progress and sometimes observing none until we look far over our shoulders. We may invest, day by day, in the child whose attitude seems never to change or the teenager who does not seem to be listening, only to discover decades later that ours were shaping words.

The cathedral builder chipped away at a stone, set it in its place, and those single stones stacked one atop another formed a cathedral. Sometimes it took a lifetime.  Sometimes it took five.  But it all started with a raw stone, and a mason, and a chisel. It started with hard work and diligence.

So, what are your raw stones?

Mine are my kids and my husband, I can see that.  We shape one another in how we speak to each other, how we encourage one another.  We have so much growing ahead of us.

I survey other stones strewn about.  Well, there is my own life, my goals for myself, my artistic pursuits.  What am I working on that will benefit those around me? How are my pursuits shaping my own heart and soul?

Raising my eyes above my own family and my self, I am working to shape the community around me.  It’s something I get to do nearly every week as I usher God’s people into his presence through music at our church.  I want us to behold God and to marvel at God, to wonder at the Cross, to be brought low in confession and raised up in forgiveness and have hearts open to the Word of God preached.  I want our small chapel of living stones to be raised into something that brings God glory and delight and joy.  I want our little part of the Kingdom of God to reflect him brighter than the moon reflects the sun when its full and gleaming.  I want to be part of shaping that.  Music is one of our tools.

There are other tools I have used more frequently in the past, and I long to take up again.  Methods of study, disciplines of thought and writing, tools that shape me and my community.  Where did I put those tools?  I am sure they are here somewhere.

I am interested in your tools, your raw stones, your vision.  Have you caught a glimpse of what you are building?  What have you learned in the process?