The Portal March 2019 | Page 18

THE
P RTAL
March 2019
Page 18
Building up the Kingdom
Julia Beacroft
I ’ve lived
in only four houses during my married life but I’ve had extensive building works carried
out on three out of the four of them. And it was a nightmare! I think it would be fair to say that building
work and I are not a match made in heaven. I loathe the disruption, the mess, the eternal dust and the way
that you can never find anything, despite your best efforts.
Our parish church is currently being re-ordered lives are built upon a strong foundation of faith, we
with – yes; you’ve guessed it – massive renovations too shall be like the man who built his house on rock:
and structural work and all its accompanying chaos. I
must admit that it’s less stressful than living with it in
 ‘Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and
a home situation, but it is still fairly horrendous and
hurled themselves against that house, and it did
difficult to work around. However, we do the best that
not fall: it was founded on rock’
we can and are lucky to have both the use of a church
(Matthew 7:25-26)
hall to celebrate Mass in and a parish priest to do so.
 © 2018 Julia Beacroft - all rights reserved
Yet most of us experience building work at some
Julia Beacroft is an author, editor, workshop leader and presenter
time or the other in our lives, whether it’s in our own
in Catholic faith formation. Her book ‘Sanctifying the Spirit’ 
homes, in a neighbour’s, at a place of work or when
is available to buy from AMAZON, www.waterstones.com
we are waiting for a home to be built. And with the
or Book Depository. Please visit www.sanciobooks.com
current shortage of housing in the United Kingdom,
for more information. Follow Julia on Facebook and Twitter
we can be prepared for far more of this.
In fact ‘building’ in its many forms is
prevalent during our life journey. We build
friendships and relationships, we build up our
knowledge, we build upon our careers and we
build up followers on social media. In fact,
building of some sort or another is all around
us.
Yet by far the most important type of
building is that of the gradual strengthening
of our relationship with the Lord. We are all
the chosen children of God who longs for us,
but it is up to us to create the space and time
to share our lives with the Lord. As St Paul
says in his letter to the Ephesians:
‘You too, in him, are being built into a house
where God lives in the Spirit’(2:22).
As we build our lives with our relationships,
careers and homes, our spirit is being built up
by the Lord. Our faith is probably the most
essential building block that we have in our
possession and this one comes without mess
and dust! However, Jesus does stir us up when
we choose to follow Him – we may find that
some of our paths are unexpected and we
may be challenged in ways that we had not
anticipated. Yet we can be reassured. If our