TGIF
Pastor Don decided that our church should have an old-fashioned Sing Along on March 23. He and Tina, Our Music Director, worked together and asked members to please inform Tina of their favorite Christian songs. We would then sing the top vote getters on that Sunday. We would sing them as our songs for the congregation to sing together, also for the Sounds of Hope Special Music, and then sing the remainder during the sermon time.
It turns out that two of the first songs we sang were written by a lady named Fanny Crosby, Blessed Assurance (#572 in our Covenant hymnal) and Redeemed (#356). Tina introduced us to Fanny, and I then searched for more information on her life. The summary that I read was – In 1820 a remarkable woman was born in New York. Fanny Crosby was a mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. She is perhaps best known as a prolific hymnist. Crosby wrote more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs in her lifetime, with two of her best-known hymns being “Blessed Assurance” and “To God Be the Glory”.
A person of deep faith, Crosby worked tirelessly to answer God’s call, first as a teacher and later as a rescue mission worker in New York City. Incredibly, the story goes that Crosby would sometimes compose seven hymns a day, memorizing up to a dozen before dictating them to her secretary! She lived to be 94 years of age.
While she was alive, and long after she passed, Fanny Crosby served as an inspiration and example of faith to many. Her legacy lives on to this day in the hymns we sing, which enable us to focus our hearts on God’s goodness, provision, and love.
What makes Fanny Crosby’s life even more remarkable is the fact that when she was an infant, she lost her sight (either at birth or only a few weeks after birth). Even so, she never let her disability distract her from the work God called her to do. All throughout her adult life she continued to compose hymns, often commenting that her blindness was a gift which enabled her to focus on her music and writing.
Other songs in our Covenant Church hymnal attributed to Fanny are:
Praise Him! Praise Him! (#12) To God Be the Glory (#56)
Tell Me the Story of Jesus (#295) Near the Cross (#319)
Rescue the Perishing (#441) Jesus is Calling (#482)
Pass Me Not (#489) I Am Thine, O Lord (#552)
Give Me Jesus (#554) Closer To Thee (#607)
He Hideth My Soul (#611) All the Way My Savior Leads Me (#680)
My Savior First and All (#768)
The following quote has been attributed to Fanny – “One of the easiest resolves that I formed in my young and joyous heart was to leave all care to yesterday and to believe that the morning would bring forth its own peculiar joy”.
Here is a woman born in 1820 who lived for 94 years with few earthly possessions, yet her outlook on life was truly inspirational and certainly as God-centered as someone could possibly be. She loved God and served Him throughout her life, in spite of her blindness. If you want to be moved by Christian music, I suggest you borrow a church hymnal for awhile and just read, or sing, the songs that Fanny shares with us in our church hymnal. Her love for God and her commitment to God are captured in all her songs!
Is your outlook on life as bright and shining as was Fanny’s? We have been given so much in today’s world, we are so blessed and we have so much to offer others around us in need. Do you feel the deep love that God has for you, and all that He has sacrificed for each of us on the cross?
I pray that I will open my heart to Jesus so that He may use me as He used Fanny Crosby throughout her life to better His world.