It’s no secret to folks around here that Friday is technically my day off. It’s also no secret that I use Fridays to catch up on everything I couldn’t accomplish during the week. Typically, I use the day to reply to emails, maybe clean up the messes that have accumulated on my desk and shelves throughout the week, jot notes for the forthcoming week’s classes, chapels, and Bible studies, and finally, write Sunday’s sermon—or at least get it started.

I also use Friday to remember things I might’ve easily forgotten, which means I gather and sort through handfuls of sticky notes with messages I’ve written to myself all week, so nothing gets lost.

To do all this, I used to drive to the church to perform my Friday routine. Lately, I’ve been doing these things from home. I clean up whatever messes I may have created, then toss most of what I need into my rolling bag on Thursday night. Then on Friday morning, I set up my laptop on the dining room table and get started. In between tasks, I mow the grass or do other necessary chores around the house. Then it’s back to work, making sure nothing is forgotten, all so that the next week starts above water, not below.

I should at least mention that Jen works from home, and the dining room table is only a few steps away. I like that. It’s an opportunity for us to spend most of the day together, even though we’re focused on other things. Still, for me, it helps make it feel more like an actual day off than less.

Now for something seemingly unrelated.

This past Thursday, the day before the routine I described above, I visited a longtime friend and church member who is, each day, being pulled by dementia further and further away from most everything she knows. Thankfully, when I walk into her apartment at the assisted living facility, she immediately recognizes me, brightening the space with her quirky trademark smile.

Still, as our time together begins, her struggle shows itself. She does all she can to remember. And even what she can remember becomes nearly impossible to follow. The nouns and verbs and adjectives are all out of order. When they do land in reasonable positions, the story they tell is fantastical. People who’ve been dead for years suddenly are in the other room, sleeping next to the penguins someone else brought by earlier that morning, so we need to speak softly. Then she’ll ask me if I enjoyed the Snickers she never gave me when I first arrived.

For me, it’s the time with her that matters most. I do my best to sort through what she’s saying, and I don’t for one second get frustrated, even after an hour-long visit. I certainly don’t spend any energy trying to correct her. For one, I’d never think of telling her that the people she’s mentioning are no longer with us. In a sense, I don’t believe that anyway. The people she mentions—folks who’ve died in the faith—they’re not gone. They’re simply away.

In a mortal sense, my time with her is kind of like playing bingo—like anticipating the next number to emerge from the spinning bingo cage. Sometimes the conversation’s numbers line up, and we get a bingo. Sometimes they don’t. Either way, it’s obvious we’re both just happy to be together playing the game.

But here’s what I really wanted to tell you about my visits with her. And maybe this is what connects us to my introduction.

I’m not just her friend. I’m her pastor. And so, I visit her for a reason. And no matter how far from me the dementia drags her, when that pastoral reason begins, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” there she is. She’s back.

Next, I’ll say, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” and she’ll join right in with, “But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That’s a whole lot of words to keep in order. And yet, she does.

A little further along, I’ll say, “The Lord be with you,” and she’ll reply without hesitation, “And also with you.” I’ll pray, and at the end, we’ll both say “Amen.”

After that, I’ll maybe sing a few stanzas of a familiar hymn, and guess what—she’ll sing along. I’ll read a portion of the scriptures, and she’ll sit quietly listening, even smiling or nodding during the parts you’d expect any normal person to smile or nod at. Afterward, I’ll start, “I believe in God,” and by the time I’ve reached “the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,” she’ll have already stepped in and joined me. Further along, I’ll begin, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and she’ll immediately join in, finishing the prayer without fumbling once with a single word.

I’m guessing you know where I’m going with this.

As a man who needs almost every Friday to keep from forgetting what’s ahead, I’m sitting with a woman who’s losing all memory of everything behind her. When we’re together, we more than represent the human condition from both directions, each of us struggling in our own way. And yet, no matter how far away our human frailty might carry either of us, what the Gospel has placed so deeply into us through Christian liturgy—what the Christian Church has believed and confessed for centuries—miraculously closes the gap.

In those moments, we’re together. I’m there. She’s there. Before and after, I may have forgotten to return a phone call or reply to a certain email. Before and after, she’ll have forgotten the names of her grandchildren while insisting that her mother is stopping by soon to help her paint the kitchen. Nevertheless, in those moments of Christocentric liturgy, something so much deeper is carrying us both, and it shows itself in a back-and-forth conversation that confesses the redeeming Christ who’s conquered all our frailties with such clarity that it’s hard not to be astounded.

Now, imagine if she’d grown up apart from such things. Imagine the disadvantage if her parents had treated worship as just one more negligible activity among many, rather than something that led to moments like these—moments when none of those other things matter for a mind that can no longer remember anything, but can only go with what has been instilled.

Yes, I know, the Lord’s promises to His people have never depended on the strength of their memories. Still, what we say and do so often that it becomes memory matters far more than we might imagine.

Sunday after Sunday, what God gives in holy worship’s liturgies is something we’ll certainly need someday, especially when our own words begin to fail, and so much of what we do know becomes little more than a heap of words and people and places and things we can no longer put in order. Even with that being true for my friend in the worst sort of way, the words of faith still come easily for her. She remembers her Lord. She hears and reveres His Word, confesses His person and work, and prays the very prayer He taught her. And what a comfort it is to know that, even as she may be forgetting everything else, she hasn’t forgotten any of that.

And, of course, my heart is well-served when I see her return in those moments, even more so when she recognizes and smiles at the one privileged to bring it to her.