Do you think she might remember if we ask her someday? I plan to ask her if I get to see her in the afterwhile! Fanny Crosby was most likely living in a Manhattan district (see its flag here) in New York City in 1869, and spoke “To the Work” to probably herself and others with whom she collaborated to help the poor of the area. We don’t have testimony from her to confirm this speculation, and perhaps her memory might falter if she were here to consider our probing for the story of this song’s emergence. After all, can someone with something like 8,000+ hymns to her credit be expected to recall the particular details of each song’s development? We can be certain that if we see and talk to her someday, and trusting that she will have a perfect memory – courtesy of a glorified body granted by our God – then we shall discover these and many other minutiae.
How many different rescue missions did Fanny Crosby (formally known as Frances Jane Crosby; also as van Alstyne, due to marriage in the mid-1800s for a time) actually support? At least five were on Fanny’s radar – Water Street, Bowery, Cremorne, Howard, and Door of Hope – along with other unnamed missions. She had plenty of energy, wouldn’t you say? And, she didn’t just visit the neighborhoods where these missions operated; she lived among the poor served by them. Perhaps that magnified for Fanny the truth of the poor’s harsh reality – every day is uncertain. Fanny evidently saw there were at least two things she could do to reverse that. Notice how many times in her poem she mentions ‘work’, ‘toil’, or ‘labor’. Twenty-seven times is more than enough to drive home her point: I need to work, and in fact it enriches my life and someone else’s when I do. The multiplicity of missions where Fanny spent time is mirrored in what she wrote – she was hardly ever not working. She, who could not physically see, was evidently so fine-tuned in her other senses, that she knew that ‘…the hungry (needed) fed’, and that they were ‘weary’ (v.2); and that there was ‘a kingdom of darkness and error’ for those who could see (v.3). She was not content with letting people remain so bound. As much as they needed daily sustenance, they needed hope, the other element of herself that she translated to the poor. She ends her last three verses with something that would especially have resonated with those stricken with poverty: something priceless is in fact free! And, this free salvation is forever! Pardon the exclamation marks, but how can one not shout this? Just trust and cling to the cross of the One who suffered, even as you poor have suffered, and even more. This hope of everlasting freedom isn’t a wispy dream. It is certain, and it has been purchased with something divine that cannot be diminished.
We’ll have all the time we need someday to appreciate Fanny and other believers, and bask in the wonder of Him and how he made us to sing. It’s rather amazing how much Fanny Crosby wrote and contributed to Christian hymnody, and yet all the while lacking eyesight. ‘Gotta be a God-thing’, someone says. Fanny so loved to work while being a terrestrial, one might wonder what job she will have in Eternity, where there will be no poor or sick. The answer we will discover once we’re there, but it’s safe to assume that adventure will also be a ‘God-thing’. From what Fanny has said herself, just being able to see Him – as she’s said, perhaps the first sight she will ever behold – will be enough. I hope God will let her take part in a few more hymn-writing episodes.
See all the verses here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/o/t/h/tothewor.htm
See the author’s biography here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/r/o/s/crosby_fj.htm
Also see here: https://hymnary.org/person/Crosby_Fanny
No comments:
Post a Comment