The Word That Never Fades

Last December, one of our faithful elderly church members passed away. As frail as his health had been prior to his death, his wife of seventy-one years had already been suffering from Alzheimer’s. She was recently moved to a nursing facility that specializes in the type of care she requires. As restrictions have recently lifted in our area, nursing homes have opened for visits once again, and my husband and I have finally been able to visit the precious widow who has supported our ministry and loved our family well for the past sixteen years.

On our first visit, this sweet church member wept when we prayed with her. Though her memories collide with the present and it’s challenging for her to stay rooted in the moment, the habits of faith that she has built her life upon still seem to anchor her with recognition of the Lord’s presence. Wherever her mind may travel, He is ever with her. On our last visit, we took our kids, which definitely seemed to lift her spirits (as it did with all the residents we saw. Please, take your children to nursing homes!). Yet, even the face of a child didn’t affect our sister in Christ like the words of the Lord.

We gathered in her room and sat on her bed while my husband opened his Bible to the passage that was preached at church last Sunday: John 11. He read of Lazarus and Mary and Martha, of Jesus’s God-glorifying delay in going to them while Lazarus was still alive. Our friend listened and nodded attentively as my husband read, but she gasped when he read that powerful sentence: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25-26). I looked up to see her eyes closed and tears dripping down her cheeks. When Jesus asks in verse 26, “Do you believe this?” she nodded.

I remember when my grandmother was lost in a world of confusion after many years in the grip of Alzheimer’s. After the first few years, she couldn’t speak or make eye contact. Her suffering was difficult to watch, and yet, there were a couple of things that penetrated the dark isolation of her mind. She always seemed to respond to the televised preaching of Sandy Willson in Memphis every Sunday morning. She couldn’t attend church anymore, but the weekly exposition by Pastor Willson seemed to touch something within her. Though non-verbal, she tried to sing along with the deep contralto voice of the social worker who visited and sat knee-to-knee with my grandmother and sang her favorite hymns to her. Maybe these are isolated events, but there is something about the words of the Lord, whether read or preached or sung, that cut through the confusion of the suffering mind, if even for a moment. I think we forget that saints who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer’s still have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them. Not only do they not suffer alone, but the Spirit testifies to their security in Christ (Rom. 8:16). He does not abandon them in their suffering but helps them as Jesus promised he would (John 14:26).

Sometimes I think about the things I fill my mind with. Shows, novels, social media. Those things aren’t inherently sinful, and I’m sure my grandmother and my church member enjoyed their fair share of leisure activities. But I knew both women for a long time, and I watched them. Nothing mattered more to them than Jesus, and their lives reflected that. Both were faithful servants in their churches who served, gave, taught, prayed, and studied. Both gave Scripture a prominent place in their lives, reading it often enough to call it to mind. I think about the way that the words of the Lord were embedded in the hearts and minds of these two women, the way Scripture shaped their daily living. The culmination of days and months and years spent treasuring Christ was producing for them an eternal weight of glory.

I have been wrestling the last several months with the first chapter of Colossians, working it into the crevices and folds of my brain each day. My memory isn’t the best but God’s faithfulness is, and I know that the Lord will use the rehearsals of his words to penetrate my heart and reshape my thought life. I come back over and over to Paul’s prayer for the Colossian saints, where he prays that they would be filled with the knowledge of God and strengthened according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy (see Col. 1:9-11). Faithful Scripture saturation fills our hearts and minds with the knowledge of God and helps us persevere until the end.

Many of us say we know God but knowing him means devoting our lives to his chosen means of revelation—the Bible. There is no other way to know him. The more we know him, the more his words wrap themselves around our hearts. The more we know him, the more glorious the truths about his character. The more we know him, the more we look like him. Even in confusion, he is there with us. When the strong words of Jesus—I am the resurrection and the life—were read in that small nursing home resident’s room, something beautiful and powerful occurred. Recognition. Because in her fragile state of cognizance, she still has the mind of Christ. Our bodies and memories will both eventually fade, but the Word of God never will.

“These things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God…Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God…’For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:10, 12, 16

 

Our bodies and memories will both eventually fade, but the Word of God never will. Share on X

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash