Why Put It Up If I Take It Down

There is a reason you have not put anything up and it is not laziness.

It is arithmetic. You will be here maybe a year. Putting things up takes an afternoon. Taking them down takes another one, and there are marks afterward, and somebody has to deal with those. So the sum comes out against it every single time you run it, and you have run it about nine times.

The sum is correct.

And the sum has been correct for eleven years, across four apartments, and the walls have been bare in every one of them.

That is the thing I want to look at, because a rule that keeps producing the same answer in every situation is not really responding to the situations.

I want to be clear that I am not going to argue with the arithmetic. It is right. Taking things down is genuinely a nuisance and marks on a wall are genuinely a problem and nobody should be pretending otherwise on a site that takes renting seriously.

What I want to look at is what the arithmetic is being applied to.

Because somewhere in eleven years, a rule about wall fixings became a rule about the year. And that second rule has been running quietly and it costs more than the first one ever saved.

Our days are as a shadow

There is a line in a prayer of David's that says something blunt about how long anybody stays anywhere.

For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. (1 Chronicles 29:15, King James Version)

There is none abiding. Nobody is permanent. That is said by a king in the middle of the most settled moment of his reign, about a building project, at the height of everything.

You are in the same position as everybody Scripture describes, and being temporary somewhere has never once been the unusual case. 1 Chronicles 29:15 says plainly that nobody abides, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man doing arithmetic about a year.

Now look at what David does with that observation, because this is the part that matters.

He says it while giving enormous amounts toward building something he will not see finished. That is the setting. He is not saying none abiding as a reason to hold back. He is saying it while pouring resources into a thing whose whole purpose is to last past him.

The impermanence is stated and the investment happens anyway, in the same breath, by the same man.

You have a model for putting something into a place you will leave, and impermanence has never once been an argument for holding back. The Spirit of God is the one who moves people to invest in what they will not keep, and it is written in 1 Chronicles 29:15 that there is none abiding and the giving happened anyway.

What eleven years of bare walls cost

Now the cost, and I want to be specific rather than sentimental.

The saving is real: about eight afternoons of work and some spackle, avoided across eleven years.

The cost is that four apartments have gone by and not one of them was anywhere. Not one of them ever became a place. Every one of them was somewhere to stay, and the eleven years are correspondingly hard to remember, because a period of your life spent in a series of blank rooms does not leave much to hang a memory on.

That is not a small trade and it never appeared on any calculation.

You are able to look at what the rule has actually cost, and eight afternoons saved has never once been worth eleven years of nowhere. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts the real total in front of a man, and 1 Chronicles 29:15 has a king invest heavily while saying out loud that nobody abides.

And here is the thing that makes this easy, and it is why I have kept the assignment small.

Nothing has to go on a wall.

Not one thing in this article requires a fixing, a mark, a hole or a conversation with anybody. The rule about walls can stay exactly as it is, because the rule about walls is correct and I am not asking you to break it.

What is being broken is the other rule, the one that says nothing goes anywhere because the year is going to end.

You are able to keep a correct rule and end a wrong one, and a bare wall has never once required a bare room to go with it. The Spirit of God is the one who separates a sensible practice from what got attached to it, and it is written in 1 Chronicles 29:15 that the days are a shadow and the giving happened regardless.

And this, plainly. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your earning, not on the eleven years. A place a man has not put anything into is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in his own kitchen.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from an apartment, and how a place is furnished has never once been a statement about the person in it. 1 Chronicles 29:15 puts everybody in the same temporary position in 1 Chronicles 29, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing, standing up

So here is the assignment, and it involves nothing on any wall.

Stand one thing you own on a surface where you will see it every morning, and leave it there for the whole time you live in that place.

One thing that belongs to you and means something. A photograph in a frame, standing up. Something from somewhere. Something somebody gave you. Not functional, not useful, not part of the running of the apartment.

Standing on a surface. The top of the bookcase, the windowsill, the counter, the shelf by the door. Leaning against the wall is fine. Nothing goes into anything.

You are putting something of your own into a room without touching one wall, and an object standing on a surface has never once needed anybody's permission. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man puts something of his own into a place he is leaving, and 1 Chronicles 29:15 has a man invest into something he would not see while saying nobody abides.

Then the second half.

Leave it there for the whole time you live in that place. Not until the move. For the whole time, which is a different sentence and a better one, because the first one is about the ending and the second one is about the time in hand.

And when you go, it goes in the last box and it comes out first in the next place, standing up, on a surface, on day one.

Because that is the whole rule change. Not that things go up. That the year counts.

You are living inside the time you actually have rather than around the fact that it ends, and a year has never once been too short to be lived in. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a period a man will leave, and it is written in 1 Chronicles 29:15 that the days are as a shadow and the building went ahead.