Spiritual Dementia
While our home is being built in Cave Creek, we’re living in a small apartment. It’s … ahem … cozy. For example, our son who is home from college sleeps in the closet of his brother’s room. Like I said, it’s cozy.
This winter our TV went on the fritz. To make a long story short, we were left with — horrors — antenna TV. Do you remember those days? Only a few stations, fiddling with the antenna, no ESPN! (I know, it’s rather shocking!)
As a result, we've been spending a lot of evenings viewing movies at home. Recently we watched The Notebook. Have you seen it? It tells the story of an older couple who now live in a nursing home. She’s there because she has senile dementia. He’s there because, well, that’s were she is. When their children try to persuade him to leave he says to them, “As long as she’s here, I’m not leaving. Wherever she is, that’s my home.”
Each morning he leaves his neighboring room to spend the day with her. She doesn’t recognize him, thinking instead that he is a visitor. “Would you like me to read you a story?” he asks. Without enthusiasm, she agrees.
He reads her the same thing every day: it is the story of their romance. She wrote it herself when she realized her memory was beginning to fade. Near the end of the movie we see the title page of the notebook. Written in her own hand, it says, “The story of our lives. Read this to me and I’ll always come back.”
Sure enough, as he nears the end of their courtship story, recognition dawns on her. She exclaims, “Wait a minute! That story is about us, isn’t it?” And for five blissful minutes they dance and reminisce before confusion returns and she no longer recognizes him.
In the span of a few minutes she travels from oblivion (not realizing her reader is her husband) to ecstasy (dancing in the arms of her loved one) to confusion (thinking her husband is an intruder). The joy and pain on her husband’s face is palpable as for a few precious moments she has clarity of mind before returning to her oblivious state.
I thought of many things while watching the movie. How refreshing it was, for example, to see the mature love of older people portrayed on film. I thought, too, of what a blessing it is to spend your whole life loving another person, and how grateful I am to grow old with my own “first love.”
And I couldn’t help but see the story as a parable of my own relationship with God. In my mind’s eye I imagined God coming to visit me every day, patiently telling me the story of his love for me and our life together.
Mostly I hear it only as an interesting tale about someone else. But there are glimpses of sanity when it becomes clear to me. “That’s not just any story, that’s our story!” For a few brief but beautiful moments we dance like they did in the movie, I in the joy of knowing who I really am, and God in the joy of his awakened loved one.
That’s why I desperately need a weekly time for corporate worship. I need to hear the story of God’s love for me over and over again, for otherwise I develop spiritual amnesia.
If my guess is correct, you are a lot like me. Do yourself a favor: take some time this week to hear the story of the God whose love for you is without limit. Remember, that’s not just any story, that’s your story. As your best defense against spiritual dementia, it’s a story worth hearing over and over again.