Fanny Crosby's Eight Thousand Hymns

When Fanny Crosby lost her sight at six weeks old due to a doctor's mistake, no one imagined she would become the most prolific hymn writer in Christian history. Yet by the time she died in 1915 at age ninety-four, she had composed over eight thousand hymns, including "Blessed Assurance" and "To God Be the Glory."

What sustained her across nearly a century of blindness, poverty, and loss? Crosby never pointed to her own resilience. She pointed to the One who called her. At age eight, she wrote her first poem: "O what a happy soul I am, although I cannot see. I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be." That contentment was not naive optimism. It was rooted in a conviction that the God who had given her gifts of language and melody would not abandon the work He had begun.

Paul told the Corinthians that the same God who enriched them in speech and knowledge would also sustain them to the end. He would confirm them as blameless — not because of their strength, but because of His faithfulness. "God is faithful," Paul wrote, "by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son."

Fanny Crosby understood this. She did not need to see the road ahead. She only needed to trust the One who called her to walk it. That is the promise of 1 Corinthians 1:9 — the God who calls you will keep you.