Eight Thousand Songs from Darkness

In 1873, composer Phoebe Knapp sat at her piano in Brooklyn, New York, and played a new melody for her friend Fanny Crosby. "What does this tune say?" Knapp asked. Without hesitation, Crosby replied, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!" The words flowed as though they had been waiting for that melody to set them free.

Fanny Crosby had been blind since six weeks of age, after a failed poultice treatment damaged her infant eyes in Southeast, New York, in 1820. Yet from that lifelong darkness came more than eight thousand hymns — "To God Be the Glory," "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior," "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" — sung by millions across every continent and generation. She never regarded her blindness as a curse. "I could not have written thousands of hymns," she once reflected, "if I had been hindered by the distractions of seeing all the interesting and beautiful objects that would have been presented to my notice."

Psalm 40:3 says, "He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God." The Almighty did not wait for Fanny Crosby's circumstances to change before filling her mouth with praise. He planted the song in her darkness — and through her darkness, millions found light.

Whatever you lack today, God does not need your situation to improve before giving you a new song. He composes His finest music on the very thing you thought disqualified you from singing.