Midweek, in the side room, because the main hall is too cold to heat for eleven people.
She sits at the back now. Not for any spiritual reason. It is nearest the door and it has a chair with arms, and she worked out in April that the arms matter more than she would like them to.
Thirty-four years old. Her walking has changed twice this year, once in February and once at the end of August, and both times it changed the way weather changes, which is to say there was no morning when it happened, there was only a week when she noticed it had.
Somebody is reading John 17 out loud because it is next in the plan, and they are reading it competently and without much feeling, the way you read a long chapter when there are eleven people and the heaters are on.
And then a sentence goes past.
The glory which thou gavest me I have given them.
She does not look up. She keeps her face doing the thing her face does. But she reads it again on her own phone under the table while the reading carries on, because she wants to check the tense of it, and the tense is what she thought it was.
Given. Not offered. Not held out. Not pending review. Given, in a room, on a Thursday night, before any of it had happened to Him and before any of it had happened to her.
If you have ever caught a sentence going past in a room where nobody else noticed, you know exactly what the next hour is like, and you know you are not going to mention it to anyone in the parking lot afterward.
He handed it over on a Thursday night
Before I say a single thing about glory, I want to name what this year has actually cost, because the order of those two things is the whole discipline of this site.
It cost you the stairs at the side entrance and then it cost you the ones at the front. It cost the thing where you say yes to something four weeks out without checking anything first. It cost the version of your body you had assumed was the permanent one, and it cost it twice, which is worse than once, because after the second time you know there is no floor. It costs energy you have to spend on logistics that other people spend on living. And it costs you the small daily management of your own face in rooms where nobody has asked how you are because you have got very good at not looking like somebody who should be asked.
I am not going to call that small. I am not going to hold it up beside anybody else's, either, because there is no ranking of suffering here and there is not going to be. Any word from God that needs your year made lighter before it can be spoken is not one Scripture speaks and not one the Holy Spirit carries.
And plainly, because it belongs here rather than at the end: if this has gone past tired into something heavier, into wondering whether the people who love you would have a simpler time without the logistics of you, tell one living person today. A doctor, one friend who will sit down and not need the whole story, or a crisis line where you live, 988 by call or text in the United States and its equivalent anywhere. Scripture nowhere asks a person to carry that alone, and the Holy Spirit has always worked through people who turn up.
Now, the sentence that went past.
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.John 17:22
Read it slowly and read who is speaking. This is Jesus, praying out loud, in the hearing of His friends, on the last night before the worst day in history.
He is not making a wish. He is not encouraging anybody. He is telling His Father what He has done, in a completed tense, in the middle of a prayer that He knows is being overheard.
You have been given the glory the Father gave the Son, and it was handed over before any of it had happened to you. John 17:22 puts the giving in the past tense on that Thursday night, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a two thousand year old sentence land in a side room with the heaters on.
Now, be careful here, because this is where the subject usually goes wrong and I am not going to let it.
Glory in that chapter is not a description of how anybody looks. Nobody in that room looked glorious. Within about four hours one of them denies knowing Him three times and the rest run into the dark, and Jesus says this sentence over them anyway, before they do it, knowing.
So whatever glory means, it is demonstrably not a report on performance and it is not a report on condition. It is something He had from the Father, and it is something He handed on, and He handed it on to eleven men who were about to be at their worst.
You are holding something that was given to people at their lowest, and none of them had improved first. That is written into John 17, and His Spirit in you is the same Spirit Jesus promised in the next chapter to those same men, so the giving and the guaranteeing were the same night's work.
Now the honest part, and you have had enough dishonest warmth from good people this year.
That verse says nothing about your legs. Not a word. It does not predict February or next August, it does not promise you the stairs back, and I am not going to promise them, and neither is anybody who actually knows what they are talking about. What God does with your body is His, in His own way. I would rather hand you one sentence that holds at the next appointment than a warm one that does not.
What John 17:22 settles is a different question, and it is the one you were checking the tense of under the table. Whether the good thing is being kept somewhere by the Holy Spirit until you are well enough to receive it.
It is not. It was given on a Thursday night, in advance, to people who were about to fail, by somebody who knew they were about to fail and said the sentence anyway.
It is already yours, and your walking was never part of the transaction. The word says the glory the Father gave Him He has given you, and the Spirit He sent is the seal on a gift that was completed before you noticed anything in April.
Jesus said the glory His Father gave Him He has given you, in the past tense, out loud, on the night before He died, over people who were about to run.
Notice what that leaves standing. It leaves the chair with the arms and the side room and both of the weeks this year when you noticed. It leaves the logistics. It makes no claim at all about the stairs, and I would rather be exact with you than comforting, because comforting wears off and exact does not.
But it takes the waiting out. You have not been standing in a line. There was no line and no assessment and no threshold of wellness you were supposed to reach before the thing got handed over, because it was handed over on a night when the people receiving it were four hours from their own worst moment.
You are not waiting for something that was already given. Scripture puts it in the completed tense in John 17:22, and the Holy Spirit in you is the guarantee written into the same night's promises.
So you can sit at the back because it is near the door. That is a decision about a door. Nobody in that room, including you, is at the back of anything else.
Declare this over yourself
This glory is yours in Christ and it is not a description of how this year has gone. What God does with your walking is His to decide, in His own way, and nothing below predicts it or asks Him for a date. John 17:22 is the ground under these three lines, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence prayed out loud on a Thursday and sets it down in a side room.
- Chair at the back with the arms on it, you are a good decision about a door and you have never once been a ranking. Scripture says the glory the Father gave the Son has been given to me, in the finished tense, on a night when nobody in the room had earned anything. Stay by the door; the giving happened somewhere else.
- Idea that the good thing is being held until I am well enough, you are put out in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit was promised on the same night as the glory was given, so there is no waiting room and there never was one. My walking changed twice; the sentence did not change once.
- Father, You gave it to Your Son and Your Son gave it to me before any of it had happened to either of us. I am saying out loud what my body did this year and then reading Your finished tense over it. The heaters are on and there are eleven of us; the gift was handed over a long time ago.
John 17:22
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