The Most Powerful Three Words on the Planet

“I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever” —Psalm 45:17, NIV

Many years ago I heard a preacher share this story about his wife. This couple had had a fruitful ministry in several churches over decades but in the latter years the wife had slowly been lost to the foggy world of Alzheimers. The preacher, though he was retired from church ministry, was still much in demand as a conference speaker. He accepted some invitations, but preferred to stay close to the bedside of his wife. She didn’t know him—or anyone else. She couldn’t remember who she was and was totally dependent on others to meet her needs. She had even forgotten how to communicate. Her husband had been asked if he every prayed for God to release her and take her home. As he told the story, the man smiled, “No,” he replied. “I never ask God that. The only thing my dear wife remembers, and constantly says, is ‘Jesus loves me’ and as long as she is a witness for the Lord, she is fulfilling her mission right from her bed.”

That story has probably gone to many corners of the world by now—the memory of the Lord perpetuated. For you and I who still have all our faculties (or most of them), this is our mission too, for as long as God gives us breath. We are called to perpetuate, to preserve, to keep from becoming extinct, the memory of God and His acts. The world doesn’t need more philosophy, more methodology, more technology. It needs the Lord.

Who knows how many people have been helped along their faith journey by a frail old woman whose only words are “Jesus loves me.” It doesn’t sound like much, but it is everything.