I Cannot Paint And I Cannot Drill

There is a picture leaning against the baseboard in your hallway.

It has been there about a year. You know exactly where it would go. You have held it up against that wall more than once, and it is right, and it is still on the floor, because putting it up means a hole and a hole means a conversation at the end of the tenancy.

So it leans. And you step over it eleven times a day and you have stopped seeing it.

That picture is doing something to you that has nothing to do with a picture.

Because it is not the only thing. There is a box you have not unpacked. There is a shelf you never bought because what would you do with it after. There is a whole category of decisions in your life that all end with the same clause: not worth it, because I might be moving.

And you might be. That part is true. This could be twelve months or it could be six years and nobody will tell you which.

But look at what that uncertainty has been allowed to do. It has not just prevented a few holes in a wall. It has quietly moved you into a posture, and the posture is waiting, and you have been in it long enough that it now feels like a personality rather than a position.

I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this article that would be insulting.

I am not going to tell you that home is a feeling. You have heard that and it is worth nothing when you cannot drill a hole in your own hallway. And I am not going to suggest you ask the landlord, because you know how that goes and it is not the subject.

I want to look at what a home actually is, in a passage where a man had considerably less claim on the ground than you have.

He sojourned in the land

There is a line in Hebrews about Abraham, and the detail is very specific about his housing situation.

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)

He sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles.

Take the three pieces separately, because each one is doing work.

Sojourned. That is temporary residence. Not settlement, not ownership. He was there without any claim to the ground.

As in a strange country. And this is the striking one, because it was the land of promise. It had been given to him. And he still lived in it as a foreigner, with no deed, no address, nothing he could point to.

Dwelling in tabernacles. Tents. The most temporary structure a person can live in, put up and taken down and moved.

So here is a man with no permanent structure, no legal claim, and no idea how long. And the verse calls what he was doing dwelling.

Not waiting. Not camping. Not managing an interim situation until the real thing started. Dwelling, in a tent, in a country he did not own.

And then the last clause, which is where it turns: with Isaac and Jacob. He was not doing it alone in a holding pattern. A family happened in those tents. Two more generations lived in them. Everything that mattered in that story took place inside the temporary structure, and none of it was postponed until the ground was his.

Dwelling is what happens inside the temporary structure, and it has never once required a claim on the ground. Hebrews 11:9 calls life in a tent in a country he did not own dwelling rather than waiting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a posture somebody has been holding for years.

The lease is not the thing stopping you

Here is the practical part, and it is going to be slightly uncomfortable.

Most of what you have not done in that apartment does not require permission.

The picture needs a hole, and that is genuinely constrained, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But go through the list honestly and you will find that most of it is not about the walls at all.

The box you have not unpacked does not need permission. The lamp you did not buy does not need permission. Where the chair faces, what is on the table, whether there is anything living in the place, whether the room you sit in every evening is arranged for you or arranged the way it was on the day you moved in: none of that touches the tenancy agreement.

The lease became a general reason. It started as a real constraint about one specific class of action and then quietly expanded to cover everything, because it is a very good reason and it ends conversations, including the ones you have with yourself.

And the cost is not decor. The cost is that you have been living provisionally for years. Provisionally is a tiring way to live and it does not announce itself, because nothing is obviously wrong, it is just that nothing is quite yours.

Most of what has not been done here has never once needed anybody's permission, and the lease has never once been the general reason it became. The written word records dwelling and family inside a tent, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a man the difference between what is constrained and what he stopped doing.

One thing you own, where you will see it

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not the picture.

Put one thing you own where you will see it every morning.

Something that is genuinely yours. Not a thing that came with the apartment, not something functional you would have bought anyway. Something with your history in it. A photograph, a book, something somebody gave you, something you have carried through three moves.

And put it where your eyes go in the first minute of the day. Beside the kettle. On the shelf by the door. Where you sit down with your coffee.

No fixings. Nothing permanent. Nothing that could ever be a conversation at the end of the tenancy. This assignment is designed to be completely available to you exactly as things are.

And leave it there. That is the second half. Not for a week. Leave it there as though you live here, because you do.

Because the thing that has been missing is not the hole in the wall. It is a daily piece of evidence that this is a place where you live rather than a place you are currently in. One object, seen every morning, is a surprisingly large amount of that.

It is possible to put down something of your own where you will see it, and it has never once required a fixing or a permission. Hebrews 11:9 has a man dwelling with his family in a structure he could take down in a morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody setting one object on a shelf.