The Yard Is Shared And None Of It Is Mine

Four doors open onto that yard and none of the ground is anybody's.

There is no line drawn. Nobody was ever allocated a corner. It is a shared space in the way that a hallway is shared, which means in practice that everybody walks across it and nobody does anything to it.

And you have looked at it for two years and wanted to put something in it.

And every time, the same question stops you: which bit would be mine?

You are standing on ground that already belongs to somebody, and a shared yard has never once been ground with nobody over it.

Let me be honest about the practical part first, because I am not going to pretend the constraint is imaginary.

You cannot dig a bed out there. That would be taking a piece of shared ground and converting it, and somebody would reasonably have something to say about it, and they would be right.

That is real and it stands.

But look at what has actually been happening. The absence of a bed has stopped you doing anything at all, including the several things that are perfectly available and that nobody on earth would object to.

The unavailable option has been declining the available ones on your behalf.

The earth is the LORD's

There is a line at the start of Psalm 24 that settles a question of ownership in nine words.

The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. (Psalm 24:1, King James Version)

The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof.

Now, notice how comprehensive that is. Not the wilderness. Not the parts nobody has claimed. The earth, and everything filling it, and the people living on it as well.

Which includes a scruffy shared yard behind four doors in a town.

You are standing on ground whose ownership was settled long before any of the four of you arrived, and a piece of earth has never once been unowned merely because the residents could not divide it. Psalm 24:1 puts the whole of it under one name, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an old ownership claim land on a man looking at a shared yard.

And here is what that does to your question, which is the useful part.

The question all along has been which bit is mine. And the answer, in the terms of that verse, is none of it, and that is equally true of the neighbors, and it always was.

Nobody out there is a landowner. All four of you are people living on ground that belongs to somebody else, which puts you in exactly the same position as each other rather than in a queue behind them.

You were never the one person out there without a claim, and a shared yard has never once had a landlord living in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who levels a question that had a hierarchy in it, and the written word puts the earth and they that dwell therein under one ownership.

And there is one more thing worth having in that verse. And they that dwell therein.

The people are included in the ownership. So the neighbors are not the authority out there either. They are fellow dwellers, which is a different relationship from the one you have been imagining, in which they are somehow entitled and you are somehow asking.

You are not applying to anybody, and a fellow dweller has never once been in a position to grant or refuse what they do not own. The Spirit of God is the one who owns the ground and the people standing on it, and the word includes both in the same short sentence.

What is actually available

Let me be practical, because there is a good deal available and none of it has been considered.

A pot is not an alteration. A pot sitting on the ground is an object, in the way that a bicycle leaning against a wall is an object. It changes nothing, it takes nothing, and it can be picked up and moved in four seconds by anybody who needs the space.

That is the entire difference between a pot and a bed, and it is why one is a question and the other is not.

You are able to put an object down without converting anything, and a pot standing on shared ground has never once taken a piece of it from anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man which door is actually open, and Psalm 24:1 puts the ownership somewhere that no dispute among four tenants can reach.

And there is a second thing that is genuinely worth knowing about shared yards.

Nobody objects to the first pot. They object to the fourth, or to a bed, or to a shed, or to anything that starts to look like a claim. A single pot beside a door reads as somebody's plant, which is a category everybody understands and nobody contests.

I am not telling you to be strategic about it. I am telling you that the fear is calibrated to a much larger action than the one you were considering.

You are worried about a reaction to something far bigger than what you were going to do, and one pot by a door has never once been read by anybody as a claim on a yard. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a fear back to the size of the actual act, and the written word settles the ownership above the level where four neighbors argue.

One pot, where you can see it

So here is the assignment, and where it goes matters.

Put one pot down in the shared yard where you can see it from your door.

Not in the middle. Not in the best spot. Beside your own doorway, against the wall, where it is plainly associated with you and plainly out of everybody's way.

You are able to set one thing down in a place you have every right to stand in, and a pot beside a doorway has never once been in anybody's way. Psalm 24:1 says the earth is the LORD's, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there with a man putting something down on shared ground.

And where you can see it from your door is not decoration. It is the point.

Because a pot nobody can see is a pot nobody tends, and an untended pot dies, and a dead pot in a shared yard is the real fear here, since it would be visible to four households instead of one.

Put it where you will look at it every time you come out, and it gets watered without any effort of memory at all.

You are able to arrange a thing so that it does not depend on you remembering, and a pot placed where it gets seen has never once needed a person to be reliable. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an arrangement that works rather than in a resolution that will not hold, and the word puts the ground and the dwellers alike under one owner.

And say nothing to anybody about it. Not as secrecy. It simply does not require an announcement, and announcing it would turn an object into a proposal.