The Blind Woman Who Saw More Than Anyone

Fanny Crosby was six weeks old when a doctor's mistake left her permanently blind. It was 1820. There was no surgery, no appeal, no second opinion. Just darkness for the rest of her life.

What happened next remains one of the most remarkable stories in Christian music. Over ninety-five years, Crosby wrote more than 8,000 hymns — including Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. She was so prolific that publishers asked her to use pen names so their hymnals wouldn't appear to be a one-woman show.

But here is the detail that stops me every time. When asked about the doctor whose carelessness stole her sight, Crosby said she would thank him — because blindness, she believed, helped her see the things of the soul rather than the distractions of the eye.

That is what grace does. It doesn't always remove the wound. Sometimes it transforms the wound into a window. Paul understood this when he wrote that God's power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Grace doesn't promise a life free of scars. It promises that no scar is wasted in the hands of the Almighty.

Whatever you carry into this room today — the loss, the limitation, the thing you wish God would simply take away — grace whispers: even this, I can use.