All the Way My Savior Leads Me
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~ Isaiah 42:16 ~
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| AI-generated image |
Six-year-old Frances knelt with her beloved grandmother beside the old lady’s rocking chair, praying earnestly for one thing—that she could go to school and learn like other children. Most children would find the request strange, as the refrain that echoes down the centuries is how tedious most kids find school. Frances literally ached for knowledge—she longed for it more than anything else--but she had a serious problem. She was blind.
It was 1826. The first school for the blind in the United States wouldn’t open until 1829. The now familiar reading system of dots, known as Braille, had been invented by a 15-year-old blind French lad 2 years previously, but it was just one of a hodgepodge of reading systems occupying the blindness education landscape at that time. In short, the prospects of Frances receiving an education were about as bright as those of people walking on the moon.
It wasn’t until one day in 1835, 9 long years after her prayer with her grandmother, that Frances’s mother sat down with her, a letter from the New York Institution for the blind in hand, inviting Frances to attend school there. Although she’d never been away from home for any length of time, Frances cheerfully accepted the challenge.
After completing her education, she got a job at her alma mater, teaching rhetoric and history. She even made history of her own, as she was the first woman ever to address a joint session of Congress. Indeed, she did it twice—once in 1844 and again in 1847, petitioning for the establishment of schools for the blind in every state of the Union. She also worked tirelessly in support of various rescue missions.
Impressive as those accomplishments were, they’re not why this lady is remembered. Rather, she’s celebrated for her hymns, and it’s likely that any hymn book in the western world of a reasonable size will contain at least one she wrote. Indeed, she was so prolific that she used perhaps as many as 200 different pseudonyms, both male and female, so that the songs in the hymnbooks would not appear to all be by the same author. The little girl’s name was Fanny Crosby.
Her most famous hymn is probably “Blessed Assurance”. The hymn from which this essay takes its title is another, and you could assuredly find others you know throughout the more than 8000 (you read that right—8000), hymns she has contributed to Christian hymnaries. The little blind girl who persevered in praying to be educated for 9 agonizing years showed God she was serious about it. She never gave up. She never quit believing, though the odds of her dream coming true were vanishingly small. Once she received her request, she lost no time putting the education for which she’d so fervently prayed to the service of both God and humanity.
Because composers of music got paid far more than did a lyricist, Fanny rarely got more than $2 per hymn. The vast majority of those proceeds went to support rescue missions. In truth, she never owned her own home, and she often lived in some of New York’s worst slums. But she left a legacy that’s endured for over a century. And I suspect she’s got one of the biggest mansions in Heaven. We, in turn, have been left with a musical heritage that would be vastly poorer without her and with the example of a life that shines brightly to help show us the way to The Way.
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Lord, please help us daily to let your light shine through us. Help us draw inspiration from those we know and admire, as well as those we know only from afar. Help us understand with crystal clarity that we might be the only face of Jesus someone ever sees. Help us love more like You. Amen.
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