Remembering

A few days ago while attending a meeting out of town I experienced something rather heartbreaking. I had gone to visit a friend staying in our hotel and upon returning to my room encountered a husband and wife in the hallway.  The man looked rather confused so I asked, “can I help you?” The wife in a desperate tone replied, “He doesn’t know who I am and where we are. He wants to leave.” His loving companion of many years was trying to get him to understand who she was but with little success. As I watched his actions and heard him talk it was apparent that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s. I tried to help by asking questions like, “Do you know where your wife and family are? Why don’t you go into this ladies room and rest until help arrives?”  But, the confusion only continued. Finally, as a last resort medics were called in to assist. Just as they arrived it appeared as if his ability to remember returned.  He moved toward his wife, hugged her and said, “I’m sorry, I love you.”  Although she said very little you could see the feeling of desperation leave her. As I stood and watched in the silence of the moment it was if she was saying, “He’s back! I have my husband back!”  I realized this episode is one experienced by thousands as they see their loved ones make the journey into a strange land of the unknown only to return occasionally to the place of sensibility. While this is such a sad sight in the natural, it is even greater for those who experience it spiritually. Jesus looked into the eyes of the church in Ephesus and said, “Remember from where you have fallen.”  Those spoken to had lost their spiritual equilibrium. They were standing in the hallways of time unable to remember who they were and why they existed. They had momentarily lost sight of the groom who had given the ultimate sacrifice for their hand in marriage.  It’s so easy to become preoccupied with business or with the needs and pressures of life to the point that we lose all sensibility. It’s not one of those things where we wake up one morning and say, “You know I think I’ll forget God today.”  No, we don’t intend to but just like the husband mentioned earlier we feel ourselves disoriented unable to put things together. The spiritual disease of memory loss creeps upon us. While we can do certain mental exercises to help in the natural, the same holds true in the spiritual. Praying, reading, meditating and renewed focus assures us that we will have no problem remembering the one who loves us and gave himself for us.