The Hymn Writer Who Never Saw the Light She Sang About

Fanny Crosby was six weeks old when a country doctor's misapplied poultice destroyed her eyesight forever. She would never see a sunrise, never read a printed page, never watch the faces of people singing her words. By every measure of her nineteenth-century world, her life was over before it began.

She wrote over eight thousand hymns.

For nearly seven decades, Crosby persevered in a darkness most of us cannot imagine, composing songs like "Blessed Assurance," "To God Be the Glory," and "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior." She often wrote six or seven hymns in a single day, holding entire compositions in her memory because she could not write them down. Publishers sometimes asked her to use pen names so that congregations would not realize how many songs in their hymnals came from one blind woman.

When asked if she wished her sight had been restored, Crosby once said that the first face she ever wanted to see was the face of her Savior. She had made peace with her suffering. More than that, she had turned it into an offering.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "We do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16). Fanny Crosby lived those words for ninety-four years.

Whatever darkness you are walking through, the God who gave Fanny Crosby her song has not forgotten yours. Keep singing. The best verse may be the one you have not written yet.