I Cannot Paint And I Cannot Drill

You cannot paint, you cannot drill, and it has never really felt like yours.

That is the sentence, and I want to take it apart, because two of those three things are facts and the third one is a conclusion that got attached to them and does not follow.

The facts are true. You cannot paint. You cannot make holes. There is an inventory and a deposit and a person who owns this and it is not you, and every piece of advice you have ever read about making a place your own assumes you can do things you are not allowed to do.

The conclusion is: therefore this is not really mine.

And that conclusion has been running for as long as you have been renting, which for a lot of men is now measured in decades, and it has quietly decided a great many things that nobody ever decided.

It decided that nothing goes anywhere. It decided that the boxes stay half packed. It decided that this is where you sleep rather than where you live, and that the real place, the one that will be yours, is somewhere in the future and cannot be described.

So tonight we are going to look at what belonging actually rests on in Scripture, and then we are going to put one thing on a surface.

He sojourned in the land of promise

There is a description in Hebrews of a man living in the exact place he had been given, and the word used for how he lived there is startling.

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. (Hebrews 11:9, King James Version)

Read that carefully. It is the land of promise. It has been given to him. And he sojourns in it.

You are able to belong somewhere without owning it, and a place a man has not bought has never once been a place he could not be at home in. Hebrews 11:9 has a man sojourn in the land that was actually his, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man in a rented apartment.

Sojourn means to stay as a temporary resident. As a stranger, technically. Somebody with no property rights in the place they are living.

And the writer of Hebrews is not describing a failure. He is listing this under faith. It appears in a chapter that is a roll call of people who got it right.

You have Scripture describing this exact arrangement as faith rather than as a stage before something real, and living somewhere without owning it has never once been a lesser way to live. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in tents and in rented rooms, and it is written in Hebrews 11:9 that he sojourned in the land of promise by faith.

What belonging actually rests on

Now the practical piece, which is the whole subject.

Belonging does not come from ownership. That sounds like a thing somebody says to make a person feel better and it is not. Look at what it actually comes from in ordinary life.

It comes from a place holding evidence of you. From your things being in it, in the open, arranged by you, where you can see them. That is it. That is the whole mechanism, and it works exactly the same in a house somebody owns and in a place with a twelve month agreement on it.

You are able to build belonging out of the only material it was ever made of, and a deed has never once been part of what made a place somebody's. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a room somebody's home by ordinary means, and Hebrews 11:9 has a man at home in a tent in a land he did not hold.

And here is the thing that has been quietly wasted, and it is the reason this article exists.

Almost nothing that makes a place yours requires a wall.

Objects on surfaces. Where the chair points. What the light is like at night and where it comes from. Which things are in the open and which are put away. Nearly the whole of what makes a room somebody's is available to you tonight, for nothing, without asking anybody, and none of it leaves a mark.

The rule about walls is correct and it covers almost nothing. It has been treated as though it covered everything.

You are holding nearly all of it already, and a rule about walls has never once been a rule about a home. The Spirit of God is the one who works through what is actually available to a man, and it is written in Hebrews 11:9 that a man dwelt in tents in the land of promise by faith.

And this, plainly, in these words. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your earning, not on where you thought you would be by now. A rented place is not a verdict on the man in it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in it on a Tuesday night.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a lease, and whether somebody owns where they live has never once been a statement about who they are. Hebrews 11:9 lists a man in a tent under faith in Hebrews 11, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing, standing on a surface

So here is the assignment.

Put one thing you own where you will see it every morning, and stand it on a surface rather than fixing it to anything.

One thing that is yours and means something. A photograph. Something from somewhere. Something somebody gave you that has been in a box since the last move.

Standing on a surface, leaning back against the wall if it needs to. The top of the bookcase, the windowsill, the counter, the shelf by the door.

Nothing goes into anything. No nail, no hook, no adhesive, nothing that could ever be a conversation when you leave.

You are putting something of your own into the open without touching one wall, and an object standing on a shelf has never once needed anybody's permission. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man puts his own life into a place he is renting, and Hebrews 11:9 has a man live by faith in a tent in a land he did not own.

Then the placement, and this is where the care goes.

Put it where your morning already goes. By the kettle. On the shelf by the door where the keys land. Wherever your body already passes before eight in the morning without thinking about it.

Because the point is not that it is displayed. The point is that you walk past it every day and it is yours, and after about three weeks you stop noticing it, and stopping noticing it is exactly when a place becomes somewhere you live.

You are putting one thing into the ordinary run of your own morning, and a photograph beside a kettle has never once been a small thing in a place a man has been calling temporary. The Spirit of God is the one present in an unremarkable morning in a rented kitchen, and it is written in Hebrews 11:9 that a man sojourned in a land and it was counted as faith.