Assurance When Mental Faculties Fail

By Carol Wollaston

Turning sixty is a bit of a shock to the system!  I certainly do not feel that age so having to tick the seniors box on a form the other day left me reeling!  I am now in that unenviable sandwich - kids issues on one hand and aging parent issues on the other.  I have a sixty-year old friends in the same situation.   So conversation centres on the various symptoms of dementia and who in our families has them.  Sometimes we are convinced we have them ourselves!
Concern for her father’s faith, prompted one friend to comment that her father had regularly attended church and had a living faith.  Now, as his mental faculties fail him, she wonders where he stands with the Lord.

The Psalmists often wrote about times of deep need and calling on the Lord for help and comfort.  But some of our older loved ones are now beyond language.  Also, I know myself that there have been times in my life when anguish and grief found me living on ‘autopilot’, with little strength for even crying out to God.  I have believed during these times, that it is as if faith, accumulated over many years of investing in the Lord’s life and ways, has been mine to quietly draw on.  During times of abject weakness it is as if God’s strength has also been deposited in me.  When I live as I have always lived, IN HIM my strong tower, then He is the strength of  my life, even though I am nothing.

I have often wondered about the comatose state and what is going on in a person’s brain when it is in an enforced state of rest.  Is this a time when God is free to speak into a person’s heart, to touch someone with His divine transaction, when there are no earthly distractions to hinder two-way dialogue?  I do not know,  for there is much we do not understand about cerebral impairments.  However, along with Abraham, Mary and Jesus, we do know that what is impossible for man is very possible for God.  As we pray for our aged loved ones we do not know whether physical or mental healing is in God’s plan for them this side of the grave.  But we do know that He loves  fellowship with us, and those who have walked in love and fellowship with Him over many years are remembered by Him.  Heb 6:10. Eccl 12:1.  Their names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  Luke 10:20, Rev 21:27.  Upon this we can rest in faith, knowing that God does not require expert cognitive powers to fellowship with us.  In fact it could well be that in this time of life that we sometimes call ‘second childhood’, there is opportunity for child-like faith to emerge, unseen by others, but known by the Father.

Psalm 73 says this.  ‘My heart was grieved,
And I was vexed in my mind…
Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You hold me by my right hand.
You will guide me with Your counsel,
And afterward receive me to glory…
My flesh and my heart fail;
But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”