For 5 years, I cared for my good friend Violet as her recollections light away. Dementia took maintain, and the feisty Finnish lady who took satisfaction in her nursing profession, her spotless garden, and her adoring German shepherd ultimately forgot the individuals and residential she liked. In her remaining months, she now not acknowledged Bible verses that had buoyed her by way of so many storms.
However she nonetheless had “Superb Grace.”
Throughout Violet’s final 12 months, I visited her each Tuesday with my Bible in hand. She neither acknowledged me nor recalled any phrases I learn to her. However at any time when I sang “Superb Grace,” she joined in, warbling simply as she had for thus a few years within the choir. In a season when the fog of dementia had in any other case clouded her imaginative and prescient of God’s grace, she reclaimed his guarantees by way of music: “I as soon as was misplaced however now am discovered; was blind however now I see.”
Refrain of Instructions
All through the Bible, reward, adoration, and thanksgiving transfer God’s individuals to sing. After God guides the Israelites safely throughout the Pink Sea, Moses leads them in music (Exodus 15:1). When God protects David from Saul, David praises him with singing (2 Samuel 22:49–50).
This sample repeats all through the entire biblical story. When God blesses Hannah with a son, she sings in thanksgiving (1 Samuel 2:1–10). After Gabriel visits Mary to predict Jesus’s beginning, she rejoices with the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). Jesus himself sings a hymn (seemingly from Psalm 118) on the Final Supper (Matthew 26:30), and John foresees all of the nations singing praises to the risen Lord within the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 5:9–12).
Paul encourages the church to “let the phrase of Christ dwell in you richly, educating and admonishing each other in all knowledge, singing psalms and hymns and religious songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). James writes, “Is anybody cheerful? Let him sing reward” (James 5:13). The Lord himself calls us to sing as we reward him. Take into account Psalm 96:1–3:
Oh sing to the Lord a brand new music;
sing to the Lord, all of the earth!
Sing to the Lord, bless his identify;
inform of his salvation from everyday.
Declare his glory among the many nations,
his marvelous works amongst all of the peoples!
Psalm 147 likewise begins, “Reward the Lord! For it’s good to sing praises to our God; for it’s nice, and a music of reward is becoming” (Psalm 147:1). And Psalm 100 joins the theme: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all of the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” (Psalm 100:1–2).
From starting to finish, singing and worship go hand in hand.
Motive to Sing
Why would God so fervently command us to unite our phrases with melody after we worship him? On the one hand, as God creates us in his picture, we’re to rejoice in music simply as he does. In Zephaniah 3:17, we learn,
The Lord your God is in your midst,
A mighty one who will save;
He’ll rejoice over you with gladness;
He’ll quiet you by his love;
He’ll exult over you with loud singing.
Moreover, after we carry our voices in music to the Lord, we direct our feelings heavenward, stirring up thankfulness in our hearts as befits the Almighty (Colossians 3:16). As Jonathan Edwards writes, “The obligation of singing praises to God, appears to be appointed wholly to excite and specific non secular affections” (Non secular Affections, 115).
“Once we learn a verse, it could possibly flit away; after we sing it, we harbor God’s phrase in our coronary heart.”
And but, there’s another excuse to worship with singing — a motive superbly evident throughout my visits with Violet. In Deuteronomy 31:19–21, God instructions Moses to show the individuals a music recounting his deeds in order that they and their offspring would possibly bear in mind. “When many evils and troubles have encounter them,” God says, “this music shall confront them as a witness (for it can stay unforgotten within the mouths of their offspring)” (Deuteronomy 31:21).
Once we sing God’s praises, we glorify him, obey him, and direct our hearts towards him. But in addition, remarkably, we bear in mind phrases our inconstant, sin-stricken brains would in any other case so rapidly neglect.
Musical Reminiscence
The historical past of God’s individuals is a narrative of forgetfulness and remembrance. Within the wilderness, the Israelites forgot the wondrous deeds God had achieved in Egypt and worshiped the work of their very own palms (Exodus 32:1–10). Within the e-book of Deuteronomy, Moses pleaded with the individuals to recollect what God had performed for them (Deuteronomy 4:9; 8:2, 11–20). Joshua constructed a memorial of twelve stones from the Jordan River so the next generations would possibly understand how God offered (Joshua 4:1–7). Lastly, within the higher room, Jesus commanded his disciples to take the wine and the bread in remembrance of him, as we additionally should do (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23–29).
To comply with Christ is to recollect and proclaim what he has performed (Acts 4:20). And the reward of music, along with stirring our hearts, aids our minds in remembering. Once we learn a verse, it could possibly flit away; after we sing it, we harbor God’s phrase in our coronary heart (Psalm 119:11).
The hyperlink between music and remembrance arises from how God designed our brains. Whereas the act of forgetting could appear easy, we even have a number of sorts of reminiscence, all organized inside separate areas of the nervous system. Declarative reminiscence includes recall of occasions, ideas, phrases, meanings, and details, and it originates within the temporal lobes and hippocampus. Research present, nevertheless, that music includes sophisticated networks within the mind past this technique.
Singing triggers our procedural reminiscence — a fancy community involving the cerebellum, motor cortex, and deeper mind constructions. Procedural reminiscence permits us to carry out actions with out explicitly specializing in them. Take into account how hardly ever you concentrate on the way to trip a motorbike or drive a automobile after your first awkward days of studying. Such procedural recollections are so robustly imprinted in our brains, that we are able to take up an motion like enjoying the piano or knitting even when we’ve not performed so in ages.
Musical processing additionally connects to emotional reminiscence, centered in a area of the mind referred to as the amygdala. The emotional reminiscence system helps us to recall occasions with robust emotions hooked up to them. The hyperlink between music and emotional reminiscence explains why sure songs transport us to a selected second in time and evoke emotions we might not have recalled for years.
Because of the connection between music and these two reminiscence methods, we are able to hardly erase catchy jingles from our heads, regardless of how a lot they annoy us. Listening to a well-recognized music on the radio can immediately carry us to that first handhold with a partner or to our party in kindergarten. Most beautiful of all, the hyperlink between these methods reveals why the command to “Sing to the Lord!” not solely glorifies God but additionally blesses us abundantly. Once we sing, we bear in mind.
Melody When Reminiscence Fails
The human mind’s beautiful means to recall music is a present of mercy in Alzheimer’s illness. Alzheimer’s preferentially impacts the temporal lobes and hippocampus, the areas of the mind chargeable for declarative reminiscence. In consequence, reminiscence for language, names, and occasions erodes away. Reminiscence for current occasions fades first, as these are much less rigorously saved. Over time, nevertheless, even distant occasions can slip away.
“God has designed the very structure of our brains to cover his phrase even when our recollections fail.”
Reminiscence for music, nevertheless, typically stays intact in Alzheimer’s as a result of it includes the procedural and emotional reminiscence methods. The response to music is preserved even in superior dementia, when sufferers can now not motive, plan, and even converse. “I bear in mind the primary time I noticed somebody with Alzheimer’s remembering the Lord by way of music,” writes scientific psychologist Benjamin Mast in his e-book Second Forgetting: Remembering the Energy of the Gospel Throughout Alzheimer’s Illness. Throughout his go to to a memory-care middle, the place “the complete vary of dementia was represented,” he writes,
When it got here time for music, and particularly the previous hymns, issues visibly modified. One lady who solely needed to depart lastly sat down for some time to hear. A person who was all the time offended and agitated now had a contented look and tapped his foot to the music. One other man who was fairly confused closed his tear-filled eyes and slowly raised his palms whereas quietly mouthing every phrase. God makes use of music to succeed in the seemingly unreachable. And he provides us this reward as a gracious useful resource to assist us in drawing individuals again to him, to reengage their religion. (139)
By God’s grace, believers who can now not bear in mind the names of family members can nonetheless readily sing God’s praises. God has designed the very structure of our brains to cover his phrase even when our recollections fail. And he instructions us to sing in order that we would recall his life-giving phrase even after we’re liable to neglect.
Sing to the Lord, my brothers and sisters. Make a joyful noise. And as you sing, whilst different recollections fade, bear in mind his superb grace — the breadth and size and top and depth of God’s love for you in Christ.
