God Uses Music to Help Us Remember When We Forget Everything Else

For five years, I watched dementia unravel the identity of my dear friend Violet. Once a sharp-witted nurse with a perfectly manicured lawn and an inseparable bond with her German shepherd, Violet slowly lost grasp of the people and places she loved. Even the Bible verses that had comforted her through life’s hardest trials no longer resonated in her fading memory.

But one thing still did “Amazing Grace.”

Each week, I’d visit with a Bible in hand and a heart full of hope. Violet couldn’t recognize me. The words of Scripture seemed to disappear into the fog. But when I sang that old hymn, something in her lit up. Her lips moved to the rhythm. Her voice, though fragile, echoed with familiarity. In a season when dementia dulled every light of recollection, God’s truth still broke through in song.

Why? Because singing is more than worship. It is memory. It is medicine. It is grace.

Singing Has Always Been Our Response

From Exodus to Revelation, the story of God’s people is soaked in song. After crossing the Red Sea, Moses leads Israel in a victorious anthem (Exodus 15:1). Hannah sings after Samuel’s birth (1 Samuel 2:1–10). Mary’s soul magnifies the Lord in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). Jesus Himself sings a hymn with His disciples at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30). And in the final scenes of Scripture, every tribe and tongue will sing praises to the risen Lamb (Revelation 5:9–12).

Paul commands the church to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly… singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). James writes, “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise” (James 5:13).

Singing isn’t just tradition it’s obedience. “Sing to the Lord, all the earth!” declares Psalm 96. “Make a joyful noise… serve the Lord with gladness!” (Psalm 100:1–2). It’s God’s own idea, woven throughout the pages of Scripture.

But why has God so intentionally called us to sing?

We Sing Because God Sings Over Us

Zephaniah 3:17 gives us a breathtaking glimpse of God’s heart: “He will rejoice over you with gladness… He will exult over you with loud singing.”

We were made in the image of a singing God. Music is not a human invention it’s a divine expression. When we sing, we imitate the joy of our Creator, and we align our hearts with heaven.

As Jonathan Edwards once wrote, “The duty of singing praises to God seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections.” Singing stirs up our spiritual senses. It helps us feel what we believe, and believe what we feel.

But there’s another miracle buried within this act of worship one that science confirms and Scripture affirms: singing helps us remember.

Singing Is a Divine Design for Memory

In Deuteronomy 31, God told Moses to teach Israel a song so they wouldn’t forget His covenant: “This song shall confront them as a witness… for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring” (v. 21).

Songs imprint truth in our hearts in ways ordinary speech cannot. We forget sermons, even verses. But we remember songs. Why? Because of how God wired our brains.

Music activates multiple memory systems in the brain most notably procedural and emotional memory. Procedural memory controls things we do without thinking like riding a bike or tying our shoes. Emotional memory connects feelings to events, powered by the brain’s amygdala. Music engages both.

That’s why a melody from childhood can transport you back to the smells, sights, and emotions of a forgotten moment. It’s why you can sing along with hymns you haven’t heard in decades.

And for those suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia, this divine design offers a profound mercy.

When Memory Fails, Music Remains

Alzheimer’s disease primarily attacks the temporal lobes and hippocampus regions responsible for storing facts, names, and events. As these areas deteriorate, patients lose the ability to recall loved ones or familiar places. But because musical memory taps different neural networks, many can still sing, even when they can no longer speak.

Dr. Benjamin Mast recounts in Second Forgetting how hymns calmed an angry man, softened a fearful woman, and even lifted hands in praise from someone who couldn’t remember his own name. “God uses music to reach the seemingly unreachable,” he writes.

That’s exactly what I witnessed with Violet. Though Scripture readings passed over her, songs stayed. Though names escaped her, hymns found her. God used the simple strains of “Amazing Grace” to remind her that though she felt lost, she had been found and always would be.

Singing Helps Us Remember the Gospel

Our faith is, at its core, a faith of remembrance.

• God told Israel to remember how He freed them (Deuteronomy 8:2).

• Joshua built stones to mark a miracle (Joshua 4:1–7).

• Jesus instituted communion with the words, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

• Paul writes that as often as we eat and drink, we “proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

And singing is one of the greatest tools God has given us to proclaim, preserve, and pass on that remembrance.

As Psalm 119:11 says, “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” Singing stores God’s word deep within where even disease cannot erase it.

Keep Singing

So keep singing when you're strong and when you're weary. Sing at church, sing in the car, sing over your children at bedtime. Fill your home with hymns, your gatherings with praise, and your quiet moments with melody.

And if one day, you or someone you love can no longer remember birthdays or faces, may the words of old hymns still rise from the depths of the heart, anchoring the soul in the truths that never fade.

“I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.”

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