If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Luke 6:29
“Abba Macarius discovered a man who owned a beast of burden engaged in plundering his goods. So he came up to the thief as if he was a stranger and he helped him to load the animal. He saw him off in great peace of soul, saying, ‘We have brought nothing into this world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.’ (1 Timothy 6:7) ‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ (Job 1:21).”
Abba Mararius (360-435), one of the desert fathers, in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated by Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1975) 131.
Can you imagine a scene where someone takes our coat and so you offer your shirt too? Or imagine saying, “Let me help you load that.”
I think most of us are far too attached to “our” material things to assist a thief in loading them only to haul them away. Our proclivity is to fight for what is “ours.”
This story teaches us to remember to hold on loosely to everything. Possessions are temporal. They come and go. We arrived on earth without them and we will depart without them. In between, God supplied them.
When people see us behave this way, it shows our faith and true attachments. It shows we have found something worth more than all the possessions the thief can load.
Is there anything you might hesitate to load? We do not find “great peace of soul” in possessing things but in knowing the Lord who provides us with everything we have ever needed and will ever need.