When someone claims what belongs to you
If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. (Matthew 5: 40)
A friend came to me with a dilemma. She had stored her Christmas tree at a friend’s place for lack of space in her apartment. At the next Christmas, when it was time to pick it up, her friend swapped her own Christmas tree for my friends’. Her friend insisted that my friend owned another color of Christmas tree, which my friend would never even dream of buying for herself. My friend was so sure that that particular colored Christmas tree belonged to the home where she stored her Christmas tree. But the homeowner strongly denied ownership, insisting instead that my friend’s newer and better-looking tree belonged to her.
My friend felt very badly treated and taken advantage of. This friend of hers happens to be a woman who was like family to her and her family. Their spouses and children were friends. They fellowshipped often.
When my friend came to me to discuss her pains, the verse of today welled up in my spirit. I told her that Jesus already had an answer for her, and I had nothing more to add to what Jesus had to say. If someone wants your item and you try your best within all possible, peaceful, respectful means of human interactions to explain that the item belongs to you and the person insists, to the point of taking the case to a third party, then leave that item with the person cheerfully and wholeheartedly.
There is to be no fighting over property by children of God. In my opinion, Jesus uses the most serious of all examples, our cloth, to drive home this point. If Jesus could ask us to let go of our very clothing, then as Christians we have to work on growing to such a place that we shouldn't hold anything material in contention. Our clothes protect us from contracting the deadly pneumonia fever in cold weather. Clothes protect us from insect bites in spaces where they can be found. Our clothing even confirms that our sanity is intact, and sane people can feel safe around us. Yet, Jesus says, if someone wants to take it by force, give it to them.
Here we see God telling us to let go of all anxiety as far as the most basic of our needs are concerned. We are to put our complete trust in him for our provisions, having this assurance that He is our source and sustainer. Jesus says this as much in the next chapter: "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to his stature? (Matthew 6:26–27).
In readily giving up our clothes in the interest of peace, we tell God that we care little about our reputation (being naked without covering), we are not afraid of the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, such as pneumonia or mosquitoes, nor are we scared of the destruction that lays waste at noonday, such as hunger and direct sun rays (See Psalm 91). In short, by giving up our most essential item, we cast our cares upon the Lord. We are anxious for nothing, but in all things, through prayer and supplication, we make our requests known to God.