Blessed Assurance -- Fanny Crosby

She certainly lived up to both words in the title of this song she penned in 1873. ‘Blessed with Assurance’ might as easily have been what she meant when she wrote one of her most well-known hymn texts in 1873, minus the contraction. For Frances Jane Crosby, better known as Fanny, no one might have imagined that this blind girl in the 1820’s would become someone whose life was blessed and who communicated such a positive aura-an assurance-to the world about her. Is it possible that what happened to her in infancy was a divinely inspired incident that would shape her as God’s tool - not an accident but instead an opening to a mission?  

Fanny was a 53-year old who was well on the way to a hall-of-fame reputation—one she would have denied for herself—when she showed why she was so gifted, with the help of a friend. At this point in her life, this ability to fuse music and poetic meter had already showed itself many times, and “Blessed Assurance” was just one example along Crosby’s life-path. How many times had she penned the words, and then allowed a collaborator to add the music, versus the opposite method in which she might have heard the tune first before envisioning the words? The latter technique must have been familiar, for Fanny’s friend Phoebe Knapp hesitated not in bringing to her a tune and asking Fanny to tell what its message was. Fanny listened closely, perhaps two or three times, tuning her ear and her heart to what was there, and announcing confidently the tune’s title within minutes. It wasn’t an accident that being blinded at six weeks old had honed Fanny Crosby’s aural skills exceptionally. But, she was likely as spiritually sharpened as she was aurally. If Phoebe’s tune spoke the words ‘Blessed Assurance’ to Fanny, could it have been because she was in touch with what God had to say about her certain salvation? ‘Assurance’ would have been a word packed with hope for Fanny, especially if she read her New Testament in the King James version (Acts 17:31; Colossians 2:2; 1 Thessalonians 1:5; and Hebrews 6:11 and 10:22). Here was but one entry in Crosby’s encyclopedic career. Call her a genius, a savant even, for she was someone specially prepared by Him for a specific task.

Fanny was able to summon at will, apparently, the poetry inside herself that spoke of Him. With some 8,000-9,000 hymns to her credit, Fanny composed almost like some of us breathe, reportedly at a rate of three songs per week for some time. There are others like her in musical history, apparently disabled in the layman’s perspective, but indeed gifted. Why? In Crosby’s case, her output’s vertical direction needs no explanation. There’ve been other musical geniuses, pointing in various directions. Fanny chose to point her listeners skyward. Which way are you looking?

See more information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.  Also, see 101 Hymn Stories by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1982; and Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.

Also see biography of composer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Crosby