The Hymn Writer Who Chose the Dark

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old after a doctor's tragic mistake left her permanently blind. She never saw a sunrise, never watched a loved one's face, never read a single note of music on a page. Yet from that lifelong darkness, she composed over eight thousand hymns — among them Blessed Assurance, To God Be the Glory, and Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.

What stops me in my tracks is what she said when someone expressed sympathy for her blindness. "If I had a choice," Crosby replied, "I would still choose to remain blind, for when I die, the first face I will ever see will be the face of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

That is faith. Not the kind that demands proof before it trusts. Not the kind that needs every question answered before stepping forward. Fanny Crosby held onto a God she had never seen with her physical eyes — and held on so tightly that she wrote hymns the rest of us still sing nearly two centuries later.

She did not need sight to have vision. She did not need answers to have assurance. "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine — oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

Faith is not seeing and still singing. If a blind woman could write the soundtrack of the church's deepest joy, then perhaps our own seasons of not-seeing are not obstacles to faith but the very soil in which it grows strongest.