Faith based music has always been an important part of my worship to God from my earliest years as a Christian when I was a teenager. Of course I enjoy it at church but also when I’m driving, just around the house and before my prayer time. I often enjoy reading through a hymn before I pray because it helps me focus on God and set aside everything else around me. So recently I was reading some of my favorites. “To God Be The Glory”, a great hymn of praise, “All The Way My Savior Leads Me” which tells about how Jesus can lead us through some of the most difficult times in our lives and “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine”.
All three of these particular hymns have one thing in common. 
They were all written by Fanny Crosby. Fanny led an incredible life. When she was just six years old she developed an eye infection and was taken into town for care. However when she arrived the normal town doctor was out of town and she was treated by a man posing as a doctor. He gave her the wrong treatment and within just days she was permanently blind.
Now some people, perhaps most, would be very bitter about this spending the rest of their lives feeling sorry for themselves that it happened to them. However Fanny was never bitter. In fact when she was 8 years old she wrote this poem.
Oh, what a happy child I am,
Although I can not see.
I am resolved that in this world,
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don’t.
To weep and sigh because I’m blind,
I cannot and I won’t!
Instead of being bitter or feeling sorry for herself she used the gifts and talents that God had given her to write over 8,000 hymns and poems to praise and glorify God.
One day Jesus and His disciples were passing by a blind man and they asked Jesus who was to blame for his blindness. Jesus answered telling them that no one was to blame, but rather he was blind so that God’s works could be shown in him. Then Jesus healed the man and the people praised God for His goodness (see John 9:1-3 NIV).
But what about Fanny Crosby? God didn’t heal her. Perhaps if He had she never would have written those 8,000 hymns and poems of praise to God. Of course then we would never have heard of her or praised God with all her works. She used her tragedy to glorify God.
Trials, hardships and tragedies come our way sometimes too. May her example can help us to see that we can use those times in our life to praise and glorify God too. To God Be The Glory, Amen.
the Rear Pew 