Fanny Crosby and the Light She Never Lost

Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old, after a careless doctor applied a mustard poultice to her infected eyes. She would never see a sunrise, never watch light play across water, never glimpse the face of someone she loved. Yet this woman from Southeast, New York, went on to write more than eight thousand hymns — and an astonishing number of them were about light.

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine," she wrote. "Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine." When asked late in life whether she resented her blindness, Crosby replied that she was grateful for it, because the first face she would ever see would be the face of her Savior.

Here was a woman who understood what the psalmist meant: "In Your light we see light." Crosby did not need functioning eyes to perceive the steadfast love of the Almighty reaching to the heavens, or His faithfulness stretching beyond the clouds. She had taken refuge in the shadow of His wings and found there a feast richer than anything sight could offer. She drank daily from what David called "the river of Your delights."

Psalm 36 reminds us that God's love is not measured by our circumstances. His faithfulness towers like the highest mountains whether we walk in sunshine or in shadow. The fountain of life does not depend on what our eyes can see — it flows from the One who is Himself the light.