The First Face She Would Ever See

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a man posing as a doctor applied the wrong poultice to her infected eyes and left her permanently blind. The world handed her an identity before she could even focus her gaze: disabled, limited, pitiful.

Fanny refused it. At eight years old, she wrote a poem that began, "Oh, what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see; I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be."

She went on to write over eight thousand hymns, including Blessed Assurance, whose opening line is one of the most powerful identity declarations in all of Christian music: "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!" Not "blessed assurance, I am blind." Not "blessed assurance, life is hard." Jesus is mine. That was the identity she claimed.

When a well-meaning minister once expressed pity for her blindness, Fanny replied, "If I had been given the choice at birth, I would have chosen to be blind, for when I get to heaven, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Savior."

The world will always try to name you by your limitation, your failure, your diagnosis, your past. But the God who spoke light into darkness has already spoken your true name. You are not defined by what you have lost. You are defined by Whose you are. And that identity — child of the Almighty — no darkness can take from you.