VOLUME I • ISSUE NO. 7

"Aunt Fanny. She Hath Done What She Could."

Today just happens to be Tu B'Av on the ancient Hebrew calendar, one of Israel's most joyful celebrations. On this evening, young women throughout Jerusalem would borrow simple white garments from one another before going out to dance in the vineyards. The wealthy dressed like the poor. The poor dressed like the wealthy. No one wanted a woman to feel overlooked because she had less, or another to be admired because she had more.

For one evening, comparison disappeared, and character became fashionable.

Comparison has always been one of the enemy's favorite weapons. We compare our gifts, our appearance, our opportunities, our timelines, our families, our losses, our success, even our faith. We spend so much time looking sideways that we forget to look upward. God has never asked His children to keep score. He simply asks each pilgrim to faithfully walk the path set before them (Hebrews 12:1–2).

Which brings us to a blind hymn writer named Fanny Crosby.

She lost her eyesight at only six weeks old after a simple eye infection was treated by a traveling man posing as a physician. Before her first birthday, her father died. Later at 39, she would bury her infant daughter Francis Jane, the only child she would ever have.

She did not begin writing the gospel hymns that changed Christian worship until she was forty three years old. By the world's standards, she had every reason to compare herself with those who seemed to have received more from life.

But Fanny found the better country.(Hebrews 11:16)

As a little girl, her grandmother filled her mind with Scripture until it became the language of her soul. She also read The Pilgrim's Progress, introducing Fanny to a place in the story called The Land of Beulah. Over the years, Beulah became far more than a beautiful place in a story. Through her hymns, Fanny wrote as though Beulah was a present spiritual reality, a life lived so near to Christ that Heaven's peace could be experienced before Heaven itself.

After all, are we not more than flesh and bone?

(1 Thessalonians 5:23).

Through Christ, we are already seated with Him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). Eternity has been set within every human heart because we were created for more than this passing world (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We still walk on earth, but our citizenship is elsewhere (Philippians 3:20). Beulah reminds us to live from that reality instead of merely waiting for it.

Perhaps that explains why Fanny could write, in "Blessed Assurance,"

"Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine,"

and later write a song declaring by the title;

"I Have Entered Beulah Land,"

She was not denying suffering. She buried loved ones. She knew darkness better than most. She simply refused to let temporary circumstances become her permanent address. She chose to dwell where the promises of God were more real than the temporary, earthly problems surrounding her. The woman who never saw a sunrise spent her life helping millions of others find The Light (John 8:12).

When composer William B. Bradbury first met Fanny, he decided to test the stories he had heard about her remarkable gift. He played a melody and waited. Before the final note had faded, she began reciting words that fit the music as though she had heard them all along.

Bradbury was astonished!

It was only the beginning. Because Fanny composed in her mind and never took to Braille, she often carried thirty or forty completed hymns in her imagination before dictating them.

More than eight thousand hymns, countless poems, books, and songs would eventually flow from a woman who never sought recognition. However, when the time came to choose the words that would mark her own grave, she left behind no list of accomplishments, only this simple testimony:

"Aunt Fanny. She hath done what she could."

So this week, if comparison has stolen your joy, if grief has dimmed your hope, if your purpose seems delayed, or if you've convinced yourself that someone else is better equipped for the work God has given you, borrow something from Aunt Fanny.

Borrow her perspective.

Visit Beulah often until Christ becomes more real than your circumstances and His promises become louder than your doubts. Then faithfully do what He has placed before you. One day, may the truest words spoken over every one of us simply be:

"They did what they could."

Until next Tuesday, may your blessings be double and your burdens be light.

Michelle Driscoll