Fanny Crosby: The Blind Woman Who Wrote 8,000 Hymns

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a traveling doctor treated her infected eyes with a hot poultice and left her blind for life. He packed up and left town, and no one ever saw him again. She would never see a sunrise or her mother's face. She would never see a single word she would one day write. And she would write more than eight thousand hymns the church is still singing today, "Blessed Assurance," "To God Be the Glory," "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior," "Rescue the Perishing," "Safe in the Arms of Jesus." The part that takes your breath: Fanny never resented the man who took her sight. She said if she could meet him, she would thank him, because her blindness taught her to see Jesus more clearly than most people with two good eyes. She used to say that the very first face she would ever see would be the face of her Savior. A five-minute reminder that what looks like your darkness may be the room where God is writing your best song. Scripture echo: 2 Corinthians 5:7 Key figure: Fanny Crosby (1820-1915), American hymn writer, author of more than 8,000 hymns Read or listen on the blog: https://rodneycoe.com/fanny-crosby-blind-hymn-writer/ Five minutes. Pull up a chair.

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A baby girl in a New York farmhouse, six weeks old, comes down with an infection in her eyes. A family doctor is away, so a stranger passing through town offers to help. He lays a hot cloth across the infant's eyes. In a few days the swelling fades, but so does her sight. Forever. She would never see a sunrise or her own mother's face. She would never see a single word she would one day write. And she would go on to give the church more songs than almost anyone who ever lived. Stay with me. You're gonna want to lean in for this one. Welcome to Lift Up Your Day, a daily five-minute devotional, short stories with a biblical heartbeat. I'm Rodney Coe, and today a blind baby girl who turned a lifetime of darkness into 8,000 songs of light. Her name was Fanny Crosby, born in 1820, blinded before she was two months old, by a doctor who never came back. You would think a story like that begins in bitterness. It did not. When Fanny was only eight years old, she wrote a few lines of verse that set the tone for her whole life. She called herself a happy soul. She said she counted up blessings other people overlooked. She would not spend her days weeping because she could not see. She could not read a book, so she memorized it instead. By the time she was grown, she had committed enormous portions of the Bible to heart, whole books of it, the Psalms and the Gospels, all of it, tucked away in a mind that had nowhere else to put it. That memory became the deep well she would draw from for the rest of her life. Fanny began writing hymns in her forties, and once she started, she could not stop. She wrote them in her head, sometimes several at a time, holding the verses in her memory until someone could write them down for her. Before she had finished, she had written more than 8,000. She signed them with around 200 different pen names because she did not want her own name on too many pages. You have sung her words, pass me not, O Gentle Savior, to God be the glory, rescue the perishing, safe in the arms of Jesus. One afternoon she was visiting her friend Phoebe Knapp, who sat down and played a brand new tune she had just composed. Phoebe turned to her and asked, What do you think this tune says? Fanny listened once and answered without hesitation, Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. The hymn was nearly finished before the question was. And here's the part that takes your breath. Fanny never once resented the man who took her sight. She said that if she could meet him, she would thank him, because a blind girl with nothing to look at had learned to see the Lord more clearly than most people with two good eyes. She used to say that when she got to heaven, the very first face she would ever see would be the face of her Savior. Maybe you are carrying something you never asked for, a loss, a limit, a door that closed and never opened again. Fanny Crosby would tell you to look closer. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Fanny walked ninety-four years that way, and she lit the path for millions of people who could see just fine, but had lost their way. The very thing the world counted as her greatest disadvantage became the place where God did his greatest work. What looks like your darkness may be the room where he is writing your best song. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.