Blessed Assurance

Remember that old hymn?

Written in the 1870’s by Frances “Fanny” Crosby – that awesome woman who wrote over 8,000 hymns and poems to declare her faith in Jesus. She was blind from infancy, not born that way, but blinded due to a botched medical procedure for an inflammation in her eyes. Her father died when she was a year old and her mother and grandmother raised her. At 15 she attended a school for the blind and learned to play piano and guitar. She eventually joined the staff at the school, later lobbied in Washington D.C. for the blind and eventually married a fellow blind musician. They had one daughter who died in infancy. And still – in spite of all these obstacles, trials and sorrows, Fanny gave us so many great works of praise.

This week has been full of ups and downs, but over and over this song keeps coming to mind.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!

Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!

Heir of salvation, purchase of God,

Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Refrain:

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Savior all the day long;

This is my story, this is my song,

Praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,

Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;

Angels, descending, bring from above

Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,

I in my Savior am happy and blessed,

Watching and waiting, looking above,

Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

What a testimony! How amazing that such wonderful praises of God’s glory should be so perfectly witnessed and shared by a woman who might have been physical blind, but whose spiritual vision was better than 20/20.

Rest in Him this week. Rest in God’s blessed assurance and know that perfect peace.