8,000 Songs from a Dark Room

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a careless doctor's mistake left her permanently blind. She would never see a sunrise, a flower, or a human face. By any measure, her life could have become a long, bitter lament.

Instead, she wrote 8,000 hymns.

Fanny refused to let darkness have the final word. She learned to compose by memorizing her verses before dictating them, sometimes completing several hymns in a single day. Her output gave the church Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior — songs still sung in congregations around the world more than a century after her death.

When someone once expressed pity over her blindness, Fanny replied with characteristic warmth: "Do not pray that my sight might be restored. When I reach heaven, the first face I shall ever see will be the face of Jesus."