Every Building by Its Stairs

He knows about the four steps at the side entrance of the community center and he knows there is a ramp round the back that nobody uses, and he has known both of those things for about two years without ever saying so.

He knows the church has a rail on the left going up and nothing coming down. He knows his daughter's flat is on the second floor and the lift has been out twice. He knows the pub does the quiz upstairs.

That is a map, and it is a map he has built without any part of it being a decision. Every building he is invited into now gets assessed in about half a second, and the assessment happens before he has consciously thought about whether he wants to go.

March, two years ago. A Tuesday. It went on a wet field and it has never been right since.

He said no to the christening in the summer. There was a reason and the reason was true, and it was also not the reason.

He has told nobody about the map. If you asked him how the knee was he would say it is not great, and he would mean it, and he would not tell you that he can give you the stair count of eleven buildings in this town.

That is you, and the knee is not the thing that has taken the most.

Two things I will hold to

The first. Go and be seen about it, if it has been a while.

This is not medical advice and I have no idea what is going on in that joint. But two years of getting on with it is long enough, and if you have been putting it off, then hear this plainly: getting it looked at is not a failure of faith. Scripture has no category in which a practical step competes with prayer, and there is no version of trusting God that requires a man to stay uninformed about his own leg. It is written, in Jeremiah 30:17, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

The second. I am not going to promise you an outcome.

Not here, not in a song, not in a declaration. Nobody writing to a stranger can promise a knee. God may do the thing you are asking. He may do it partly, or slowly, or in a way that surprises you, and He may do something else, and that is His and it will never be a report on you. Scripture settles that in Jeremiah 30:17, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

In between those two there is a lot of room, and everything on this page happens inside it.

You are welcome to bring this joint to God exactly as it is. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth, Psalm 145:18, and in truth is the useful phrase, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man stop being reasonable about it for a minute and say the actual thing.

The verse comes after an insult

There is a line in Jeremiah that most people quote without the sentence in front of it, and the sentence in front of it is what makes it land.

For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.Jeremiah 30:17

Read the reason God gives. Because they called thee an Outcast.

He is not responding to the wound only. He is responding to what people said about the wounded one, and specifically to the idea that this is somebody nobody comes looking for.

That is a very particular thing to be moved by, and it is worth sitting with, because the injury in your life is not the part that has isolated you. The map is. And the map got built out of a quiet assumption that a man who needs to ask about stairs is a man who has become a bit of a bother.

Nobody said that to you. You supplied it. And God, in that verse, goes specifically at the version of a person that has been written off, including when the one doing the writing off is the person themselves.

You are not an outcast in your own town. Scripture says I will restore health unto thee, because they called thee an Outcast, Jeremiah 30:17, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a sentence with that reason attached into a hallway where a man is counting steps.

The map is the thing to look at

Here is what two years has actually cost, and it is not in the joint.

The christening. The quiz. The two evenings at your daughter's you found a reason not to do. The bit at the end of a funeral where everybody goes back to a house and you did not, and everybody assumed you were tired and you let them. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Jeremiah 30:17, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

Each of those was one small sensible decision, made in half a second at a door, and not one of them was announced. And together they are a man who has been steadily removing himself from the ordinary rooms of his own life while telling everybody the knee is not great.

The joint took your walking. The map has been taking everything else, and only one of those two is inside your control.

You have not become a bother to the people who love you. Scripture says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, Galatians 6:2, and it names no exception for men with bad knees, and the Holy Spirit does not treat being asked about a rail as an imposition anybody in your life would resent.

Ask about the stairs, and ask God plainly

Two things, both small.

The first is the ordinary one. Ask about the stairs. Out loud, in advance, of the person inviting you. Is that upstairs? Four words. Not an explanation and not an apology.

I know why you have not. You have run it forward and you can see the small fuss, the oh we can do it somewhere else, and you have decided that the cost of that fuss is higher than the cost of not going. It is not higher. Four minutes of somebody rearranging a room is nothing. Two years of a man not being anywhere is not nothing. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Jeremiah 30:17, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

The second is God, and I suspect you have been general about it. Lord, sort the knee out. Be specific. Say the joint, say the field in March, say the stairs at the community center. Not because a wording unlocks anything, because it does not, and anybody selling you a form of words is selling a technique instead of a Father.

And ask for what you actually want. In the Gospels a blind man is told by a whole road to be quiet and shouts louder, and when Jesus asks him what he wants he does not say whatever you think best. He says he wants to see, and nobody corrects him for it. Scripture records the question and the plain answer with no rebuke attached, Mark 10:51, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by a man asking for a knee.