Fanny Crosby and Twin Realities

Just the other day, my wife and I were singing Fanny Crosby's Blessed Assurance. There's always one line that sticks out to me:

Perfect submission, perfect delight!
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight

Fanny Crosby was blind from the time she was a baby and therefore had no concept of vision at all. That's what makes this line precious.

She is a living example of the irony Jesus spoke of in Matthew 13. After telling the Parable of the Sower he explains to his disciples why he speaks to the people in parables, "Because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." In other words, it was to condemn those who failed to believe for physically seeing Jesus, while failing to perceive spiritually that he was the Christ who was to come.

Crosby, however, is on the opposite side of the irony. Although not able to see, oh how she could see!

Further, it is in this manner that she exemplifies the glory of God in redemption. Paul states it best in 1 Corinthians 1. Take verses 26-29:

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.


This is a theme that weaves its way throughout Scripture. Jacob was chosen over his older brother Esau (Genesis 27). Joseph was chosen to save the people of God from famine and all of his older brothers ended up bowing to him (37-50). Jacob then gave Ephraim a greater blessing than the older brother Manasseh, saying, "The younger brother shall be greater than he" (Genesis 48:19). When the office of king began in Israel, David was chosen to be the king by which every other king was gauged, although he was the youngest in his family and a mere shepherd boy (1 Samuel 16).

In teaching his disciples, Jesus makes the same principle clear in terms of the kingdom, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 19:14).

In Crosby, these twin realities of sight and weakness shine forth wonderfully. God called her, weak in the eyes of the world, and transformed her into a beacon of light through her hymns. What is more, it often these very weaknesses that God uses in our live so that we would rely on Christ. As she wrote:


It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.

Although physical blindness is certainly disabling, it was joy for Crosby. Her very life proclaims with Paul, "I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me...for when I am weak, then I am strong" (1 Corinthians 13:9,10).

Praise God for Fanny Crosby, and that her physical blindness gave way to a spiritual sight that has blessed believers for years. May we press on toward Jesus with all the tenacity she expressed in stating, "When I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior."