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March 14, 2009
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=========================== TODAY'S ARTICLE ==========================
Dibs, by Patrick D. Odum
The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and
you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers (Leviticus 25:23).
Chicago has a fascinating tradition that's in some ways as much a part
of its fabric as the Cubs and Sox, deep-dish pizza, windy winter days,
and skyscrapers. It's a tradition for snowy days during the winter
months, when the combination of heavy snow, narrow residential streets,
and lots of apartment buildings make parking a challenge.
It's the tradition of putting household items out on the curb to
reserve parking places.
It works like this. If you park on the street, when the snow plow comes
through it pretty much buries your car. Armed with a shovel, you go out
into the cold and dig your vehicle out, leaving a nice parking space
carved out of the snow bank. The problem, of course, is that the
shortest measurable length of time so far discovered by human beings is
the time between the moment you pull out of that space and someone else
pulls in. (Statisticians estimate that, at any given time, upwards of
20,000 people are driving around Chicago neighborhoods looking for
parking. OK, I made that up; but I bet I'm not too far off.)
So someone, sometime, came up with the idea of bringing out an old lawn
chair to put in his spot until he got home. It's actually fascinating
to notice as you drive through Chicago neighborhoods just what people
will use to reserve their spots. I've seen floor lamps, couches, bar
stools, bookcases, and old tires. Some folks go the utilitarian route
and use orange traffic cones. Quite a few use sawhorses with "no
parking" signs hanging from them. I've seen chairs, coffee tables, and
I read about a guy who scatters a couple of boxes of screws and roofing
nails in his spot. (It takes him an hour or two to pick them all up --
in which time, of course, he could drive around and find another place
to park ...) I've even seen an old toilet. Once, I drove by and saw a
kid standing in a freshly dug-out space. I could only assume his
parents didn't have a spare lawn chair or an old toilet.
Despite the fact that it isn't legally possible to own a parking space
on the street, no matter how much time you may have spent digging it
out, to move someone's space marker and park in "their" space is to ask
for retaliation in the form of a broken windshield, slashed tires, or
angry confrontations. And that's just the elderly grandmother who lives
down the street from me. People get possessive about those parking
spaces they work hard to dig out -- psychotically so. Remember when you
were a kid and would call "dibs" on something? It's like that, only
more so.
So I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone dug out a space in
front of their neighbor's house, and then reserved it for him.
That would just be weird, wouldn't it? Fly in the face of everything we
assume in our world to be right. If you doubt that, try it sometime.
I'm guessing that your neighbor won't know what to say or how to
respond. It's just too strange, just too opposed to the popular notion
that says "What's mine is mine." There are only so many places to park,
after all. If you take "my" space, where will I put "my" car?
You can be excused if you haven't heard much about the Jubilee year in
the Old Testament. The Law of Moses decreed that every fiftieth year
was to be a year of general amnesty and redemption. Specifically, any
sale of property made in the previous fifty years was nullified and the
property returned to the family that originally owned it. The purchase
price for property, in fact, was supposed to reflect the number of
years left until Jubilee.
So declare your own personal Jubilee.
Sounds pretty strange to us, doesn't it? Keep in mind, property in
Israel was assigned by tribe and family, so for there to be equity
those tribal possessions needed to remain fairly constant. That was the
practical reason for it, but the practical reason rested on the
theological one: the land on which Israel lived didn't belong to Israel
at all. It was God's land, given to them because of his generosity and
grace. Every fifty years, they had no choice but to remember it.
I can't begin to imagine the economic implications of something similar
to a Jubilee today -- though maybe at this point we should be willing
to try anything. And, hear me now, I'm not advising you to help
yourself to your neighbor's parking space this winter. Not everyone's
ready to celebrate a Jubilee, you understand. I do think, though, that
as God's people it would do us good to remember that what we own isn't
as much "ours" as we tend to think, and to try to mold our attitudes
about "our" stuff accordingly.
As the Jubilee laws of ownership remind us, our attitudes won't be
molded if our actions don't change. As Jesus reminded us, "[W]here our
treasure is, there our heart will be also." If our habits in regard to
collecting and keeping stuff look no different than the habits of those
who don't recognize that God is ultimately the owner and bestower of
everything we have, then we shouldn't be surprised when our attitudes
begin to reflect theirs, too. In short, if you act like you have "dibs"
and take special care to mark off "yours" from "theirs," it won't be
long until you start to believe it, and God is out of the picture
entirely.
Maybe what we need, in this land of affluence and opportunity, the
birthplace of the American Dream, is a good dose of Jubilee. We -- yes,
those of us who set such stock in titles and deeds and all the myriad
ways we call "dibs" on stuff that we don't want to share -- might now
and then need a reminder that God isn't necessarily impressed with the
legal chairs and traffic cones and sawhorses we use to keep other
people away from "our" stuff. In fact, in God's world it might just be
that he makes us trustees of his resources so that we can be a blessing
to those other people.
So declare your own personal Jubilee. You're not allowed to declare
your own debts cleared, you understand, but maybe God's calling you to
free someone from a debt that they owe you and are having trouble
paying back. Maybe you have something that someone else could use, and
God's calling you to give it to that person. Maybe God's asking you to
welcome someone as a guest in your home -- the home he gave you. Maybe
God's calling you to use your expertise to help someone without
worrying about whether you get compensated or not. Whatever blurs the
lines of ownership reminds us that it's really God who gave it to us --
God is the one through whom all blessings come. Whatever removes the
markers that tell others that some of the things we have are off-limits
-- that's Jubilee.
All that old furniture in front of your house in those parking spaces
looks kind of tacky, anyway.
---------
(c) 2009 Patrick D. Odum <p.d.odum@gmail.com>.
RELATED LINKS:
* On Spending a Life Well
http://www.heartlight.org/feature/sf_980318_spending.html
* Forgiveness
http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/1127-pm.html
* Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200707/20070704_libland.html
* Faith Web
http://www.faithwebblog.com/
This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200903/20090314_dibs.html
=========================== FEATURED PRODUCT =========================
CINDERELLA - THE LOVE OF A DADDY AND HIS PRINCESS, by Steven Curtis Chapman
Steven Curtis Chapman reminds dads to enjoy the everyday moments with
their daughters. They will soon be gone.
http://shopping.heartlight.org/cgi-shl/link?260
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