The Blind Woman Who Sang Her Way Through the Gates

When Fanny Crosby was only six weeks old, a doctor's mistake left her permanently blind. She never once saw a sunrise, a flower, or the face of someone she loved. Yet by the time she died in 1915 at ninety-four years old, she had written more than eight thousand hymns — among them "Blessed Assurance," "To God Be the Glory," and "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior."

What stunned those who knew her was not her productivity but her disposition. Crosby refused to speak bitterly about her blindness. "If I had a choice," she once told a reporter in New York, "I would still choose to remain blind. For when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my blessed Savior."

She did not write from comfort or ease. She lived modestly in Manhattan tenement neighborhoods, spending her evenings teaching at rescue missions along the Bowery. Yet every morning she began the same way — on her knees, thanking the Almighty for another day, then composing melodies she could never read on a printed page.

Psalm 100 calls us to "enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise." Fanny Crosby understood something many sighted people miss: gratitude is not a response to favorable circumstances. It is the deliberate, joyful recognition that the Lord is good, that His faithfulness stretches across every generation — and yes, even through every darkness.