The First Face She Would Ever See

When Fanny Crosby was just six weeks old, a man claiming to be a doctor applied a hot mustard poultice to her inflamed eyes. The treatment destroyed her sight permanently. She would never see a sunrise, never read a page of scripture with her own eyes, never watch the faces of the congregations that would one day sing her words.

Yet from that darkness came more than eight thousand hymns. Blessed Assurance. To God Be the Glory. Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. Song after song poured out of a woman who could not see the hand in front of her face but who saw, with remarkable clarity, the faithfulness of God.

When a well-meaning minister once expressed pity for her blindness, Crosby's response stunned him. "If I had been given a choice at birth," she said, "I would have asked to be made blind, for when I get to heaven, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Savior."

That is hope distilled to its purest form — not a denial of suffering, but a reframing of it in light of eternity. Crosby did not pretend her loss was painless. She simply trusted that what she could not yet see was more real than what she had never seen.

The writer of Hebrews calls faith "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Fanny Crosby lived those words for ninety-four years. And she invites us to do the same — to hold on, not because we can see the ending, but because we trust the One who can.