The First Face She Would See

Fanny Crosby was six weeks old when a man posing as a doctor applied a hot poultice to her inflamed eyes. The treatment destroyed her sight permanently. She would never see a sunrise, a mother's smile, or the words she would one day write.

Over the course of her ninety-four years, Crosby composed more than eight thousand hymns — among them Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior. She wrote from a place of darkness that most of us cannot imagine, yet her words have carried millions into the presence of the Almighty.

What arrests me is not the staggering volume of her work. It is what she said when someone expressed pity about her blindness. "If I had been given a choice," Crosby replied, "I would have chosen to be blind — because when I get to heaven, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Savior."

That is not the faith of someone ignoring her suffering. That is the faith of someone who has weighed everything this world can take from her and found something heavier on the other side of the scale.

Faith does not require us to pretend the darkness isn't real. It asks us to trust that what waits beyond it is worth every step we take without seeing. Fanny Crosby walked that road for ninety-four years — and she never once called it a loss.