I Rent And I Cannot Dig Anything

You cannot dig here.

That is a fact and I am not going to argue with it. It is not your ground, there is a clause about alterations, and putting a fork into a lawn that belongs to somebody else is a genuinely bad idea whatever anybody on the internet says.

So far so reasonable.

But somewhere between that fact and now, a much larger conclusion got drawn, and I do not think you were present when it happened.

The conclusion is: therefore I cannot garden.

And that does not follow. Not even slightly. The premise is about digging and the conclusion is about growing, and those are not the same activity, and a great many people have done the second without ever doing the first.

You are allowed to grow something in a place you do not own, and a lease has never once been a condition anybody put on soil.

Here is what I think is actually underneath it, and it is not really about the lease.

It is that gardening feels like a thing done by people who are settled. There is something in the word that implies permanence, a plot, a future in one place. And renting feels provisional, and putting something in soil feels like an act that belongs to people whose lives have a different shape from yours.

So the clause about alterations is doing a job it was never written to do. It is standing in for a much larger feeling about being temporary.

Build ye houses, and plant gardens

There is an instruction in Jeremiah written to people in exactly your position, and it is one of the strangest and most practical letters in Scripture.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them. (Jeremiah 29:5, King James Version)

Plant gardens.

Now, understand who this was written to. These are exiles. They are in Babylon, they did not choose to be there, they have every expectation of leaving, and the whole national hope is that this arrangement is temporary.

And into that, God says plant gardens.

You are being addressed by an instruction that was written specifically to people in a borrowed place, and Scripture has never once told anybody to wait until the ground was theirs. Jeremiah 29:5 says plant gardens to people in exile, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a letter to Babylon land on a woman with a lease and a windowsill.

And notice that He does not soften it. He does not say plant something small in case you leave. He does not say keep it in pots for portability, which would have been the sensible advice.

Build houses. Plant gardens. Eat the fruit. Every one of those verbs assumes a stretch of time the people themselves did not believe they had.

You are being told to act as though there is time, and God has never once made permanence the condition for putting something in the ground. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives an instruction that outruns a person's own sense of how long they will be somewhere, and the written word says plant gardens without one word about the tenure.

And there is one more thing about that letter which is the part that helps most.

It was written by somebody who knew exactly how long they would be there, and the people receiving it did not. God knew it was seventy years. They thought it was two. And the instruction is the same either way, which tells you the instruction was never about the length.

You were never required to know how long you will be here, and an instruction that holds for seventy years has never once needed the person to work out the number first. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the length while a person does not, and the word says plant gardens without asking anybody to calculate.

What you can actually do

Let me be practical, because the practical version is larger than you think.

You cannot dig. You can do almost everything else.

Anything that holds soil and has a hole in the bottom is available to you. A pot, a bucket, a crate, a tub, a bag of compost laid on its side with slits cut in it, a tin with a nail through the base. None of that is an alteration and none of it needs anybody's permission.

You are able to do the whole of this without touching one inch of anybody's ground, and a container has never once been a lesser place for a thing to grow. The Holy Spirit is the one who works with what is actually available, and Jeremiah 29:5 says plant gardens to people who owned nothing where they were standing.

And here is the part about moving, since it is the real objection and it deserves a straight answer.

If you move, the pots come with you. That is the whole answer. A person who has been growing things in containers for two years and then moves has two years of growing things and a car boot of pots, and starts the next place already going rather than starting again.

The thing you have been afraid of losing is the one thing about container growing that cannot be lost.

You are able to take the whole of it with you when you go, and a garden in containers has never once been left behind by anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a thing that travels, and the written word tells exiles to plant while fully expecting them to be somewhere else eventually.

Fill one container today

So here is the assignment, and the timing is deliberate.

Fill one container with soil and put one thing in it today.

Whatever is in the house. A pot you already have, a tub something came in, a bucket. Make a hole in the bottom if there is not one.

You are able to begin with an object that is already in this flat, and a bucket with a hole in it has never once been the wrong vessel to start with. Jeremiah 29:5 says plant gardens to people with no ground at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen while a woman fills something with soil.

Today, and not when you next move, and not when the lease is up.

Because the waiting is the thing that has been operating. Every move produces a fresh reason to wait until after the next one, and there is always a next one, and a person can spend a great many years in that pattern without ever having decided anything.

You are able to start in a place you might leave, and a provisional address has never once been a reason to postpone soil. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a rented kitchen, and the word puts the instruction to plant in the hands of people who were certain they were going home.

And put it somewhere you pass. Not somewhere sensible. Somewhere you will see it several times a day, because that is what makes it a garden rather than an object.