When Your Memories Fade, What Will Remain?
One of the tragedies of the senior years is that your mind can become fragile, memory can fade, and the ability to communicate can decrease. May you never lose your precious memories or your ability to speak! But it can happen. In light of that, plan to lodge in your mind what you want never to forget.
Barry York asks, “When you have no one or no thing to which to cling, what will be your solace and help? Now, rewind back to the present. Just as for any trip, we must prepare and pack for the journey, so you should be preparing for your time to walk through that dark valley. What you should begin packing now, like gold into a chest, is the Word of God into your mind and soul. To do so is to call Christ near, both now and for the future.” 1 Perhaps, if you have packed your mental suitcase right, you will, like a senior saint I met decades ago, have as your final words a heartfelt recitation of your favorite verse. Your last thoughts will be of grace alone!
A Golden Opportunity
What a wonderful opportunity I was given. During my junior year in college, the senior adult minister at my home church, knowing my call to ministry, handed over his rehabilitation hospital Bible study to me. He lovingly said something to me like, “Sink or swim,” as in, “Learn to teach in this setting or discover that you cannot and should pick a different career!”
Early Sunday mornings, the facility’s staff would gather their residents who wanted to attend and bring them to the cafeteria, where I led a Bible study, and the whole group sang hymns. They received encouragement hearing and singing God's word, and I gained desperately needed opportunities to practice teaching. Although they came willingly, God gave me a captive audience! Where else could they go? Since it was a rehabilitation hospital, residents would heal up and leave, so I had a new "congregation" every two or three weeks. I am so thankful for that opportunity to learn to comfort souls and to practice teaching.
A Cowardly Retreat
After about a year, a nearby nursing home asked if our church would begin the same type of Sunday morning service there. I arrived on the first day with great hope. But something was different. Either the staff misunderstood the instructions or just wanted to give me a hard time. They did not gather up the conscious and willing and brought in the semi-conscious and helpless.
They brought me six patients who were unable to speak, barely able to hear, and who likely did not know where they were. Moaning, groaning, and occasional shouting were the limits of their ability to communicate. I was unsettled and frightened! At a loss as to what to say to people who could not understand me, I said little. I mumbled some prayers over them, read some short Psalms aloud (mainly to comfort myself), and beat a cowardly retreat out of there within 15 minutes.
A Verse Hidden in the Heart
And yet, as I packed up to go, God displayed his glory in that dark place! I can still picture the scene. One of the women, with her head to the side, unable to lift it fully, fixed her gaze on me and, in a remarkably clear voice, said," For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8).
Shocked, I tried to talk to her. But she was talking to God, not me. She kept reciting the verse again and again and again. Grace alone was all she had left, and that was all she really needed! Whatever was happening in her mind and her body did not matter. This woman knew who saved her and how! And God had planned that a scared young preacher standing in front of her would learn the value of memorization. Before I left her side, I took an index card, wrote out the verse with the reference, and put it on the table arm of her wheelchair. I wanted the staff to see she was not mumbling incoherent words but preaching the gospel of life to them.
An Incentive to Memorize
There were several reasons I began memorizing Scripture before I left for seminary, but that incident was a powerful one. I remember thinking, “Lord, may that be me someday! If my mind fails, may I still be able to testify to your grace!” I left for seminary that summer and never returned to that nursing home, but someday, I will see that woman again in glory. She will be singing of the grace that saved her and the grace that preserved her mind enough to testify about it to the end: “Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” May we memorize and meditate so intensely that the words of faith never leave our minds, regardless of what happens to us! Start packing up your mental suitcase today and stuff it full of God's words of grace!
Here is the link to the wonderful article quoted in the article.
"Scripture Memories" by Barry York
1Barry York, “Scripture Memories,” Gentle Reformation, 15 Sep. 2011, https://gentlereformation.com/2011/09/15/scripture-memories/
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