Everything Has My Name On It

Half past nine at night, in the garage, with a marker in his hand and a spirit level on the bench.

His initials. Small, in the corner, in the place he always puts them, which he did not know he had until that evening.

He stood there for a bit.

Because the level had come back that afternoon. His neighbor had it for six days and brought it back with a bar of chocolate for the children, and it was fine, and nobody had done anything wrong.

And within four hours of it coming home he was writing his name on it.

Once he saw it he could not stop seeing it. He went round the garage with a torch, which is not a thing a well man does at half past nine, and it is comprehensive. The plane. Both saws. The good screwdriver set, on the case and on four of the handles. The extension lead. A pair of secateurs he inherited and has never used.

He is not mean. He wants that on the record and everybody who knows him would say it. He lends things constantly. The neighbor had that level for six days and would have had it for a month and there would have been no phone call.

That is exactly the thing he cannot square.

He lends freely and he labels everything, and both of those are true at once, and he has never noticed the second one until a marker was already in his hand.

Neither said any of them that ought was his own

Put the marker down a minute, because there is a description in Acts of how a group of people held their things, and it is a sentence about the inside of a person rather than about paperwork.

And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.Acts 4:32

Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own.

Read the first half of that clause carefully, because it is easy to skip. Of the things which he possessed. The possessing is stated plainly and it is not disputed anywhere in the verse. These are people with things, and the things are theirs.

What changes is the saying, and the saying is a report on the grip.

Hear this in your own garage. You are not being asked to give anything away, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture keeps the possessing intact and moves what a man says about it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has made you a man who lends freely for years, so nothing about the marker is a verdict on your generosity.

Now let me name what the labeling is actually doing, because it is not meanness and calling it meanness would be inaccurate and you would dismiss the whole article.

It is insurance against loss.

Not against theft. You do not think your neighbor steals. It is insurance against the slow drift by which a thing goes out and does not come back and eventually nobody can remember whose it was, and a man who has lost tools that way once tends to buy a marker.

That is reasonable, and it is also the exact opposite of the sentence in Acts, because the whole labor of writing your initials in a small corner is the labor of making sure the answer to whose is it never becomes unclear.

Hear this too, and let it settle where the torch was. You are not gripping because you are greedy, and Scripture is what says so. What is written moves the saying rather than the owning, and the Spirit of God has never once asked anybody to hand over what is theirs, and nothing about your possessions is being called into question by anyone in this article.

And let me be plain, because this category could be handled badly and this site will not do it. Nobody here is suggesting you give your tools to anybody, or to a church, or to any organization whatsoever. Nothing is being asked of you and nobody is asking you for anything. The idea that a person should hand over what they own to somebody who is teaching them is not what Acts describes and it is not what this page is for.

The whole of what is being suggested is one thing lent, and lent means it comes back.