The Hymn Writer Who Saw More Than Most

Fanny Crosby was six weeks old when a country doctor applied a hot poultice to her infected eyes. The treatment was wrong, and the damage was permanent. She would never see a sunrise, never read a page of scripture with her own eyes, never watch a congregation sing.

By any measure, life had handed her an excuse to quit before she even started.

Instead, Fanny Crosby wrote hymns. Not a handful — over eight thousand of them across nearly nine decades of life. "Blessed Assurance." "To God Be the Glory." "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior." Songs that have been sung by millions in every language and tradition. She often composed entire hymns in her head, holding dozens of verses in memory before dictating them.

When someone once expressed sympathy for her blindness, Crosby replied, "If I had been given a 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."

That is perseverance — not gritting your teeth through difficulty, but finding a deeper purpose inside of it. She did not endure her blindness. She composed through it.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen" (2 Corinthians 4:18). Fanny Crosby took those words more literally than most of us ever will. Whatever darkness you are walking through today, the God who gave Fanny Crosby eight thousand songs has not run out of music for your life either.