Story we shared on Fanny Crosby and quote from Stedman

Throughout her long career, Fanny Crosby wrote more than 8,500 gospel songs and hymns, many of which are still popular today. "To God Be The Glory," "Praise Him, Praise Him," "Tell Me The Story Of Jesus," "I Am Thine O Lord"—every song is a testimony of her love for Jesus Christ. However, this gifted poet, who described her salvation experience as a "floodtide of celestial light," could not actually see light.

In May of 1820, when she was six weeks old, she caught a cold, and her eyes became slightly inflamed. The regular physician in Putnam County, New York, was out of town, and a man posing as a doctor gave her the wrong treatment. Within days, her eyesight was destroyed, and the man fled town in a panic. Fanny was never bitter about the stranger's intervention. She has been blind since she was six months old, but she is of a happy, contented disposition, and refuses to be pitied because of her great affliction. Indeed, when only eight years old she wrote:

O what a happy soul am I!
Although I cannot see,
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be;

How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don't!
To weep and sigh because I'm blind,
I cannot, and I won't

Later in life she wrote...

"I have not for a moment in more than eighty-five years felt a spark of resentment against Him, because I have always believed...that the good Lord...by this means consecrated me to the work that I am still permitted to do."

Early in life, she began memorizing the Bible and eventually could repeat, by rote, the entire Pentateuch, all four Gospels, many of the Psalms, all of Proverbs, as well as the entire books of Ruth and Song of Solomon. She stated at the close of her life,

One time a preacher sympathetically remarked,

"I think it is a great pity that the Master did not give you sight when He showered so many other gifts upon you."

She replied quickly,

"Do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one petition, it would have been that I should be born blind?"

"Why?" asked the surprised clergyman.

"Because when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior!"

Lord God please open the eyes of our heart to see Thee with eyes of faith as our Elohim, our Creator, just as Fanny Crosby was enabled to see Thee so clearly. Amen.

Fanny died peacefully in her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on February 12, 1915. The crowds at her funeral were a testimony to the wide-spread influence she had for the Lord. The refrain from one of her final hymns beautifully expresses the foremost hope of her life and in so doing greatly glorifies Fanny's Elohim ...

Ray Stedman makes an interesting observation that...

it has been pointed out often that here (Ge 2:4,5, 7, 8,9) the name of God appears in a different form than in Genesis 1. We have for the first time the great name of God that appears in so much of the rest of the Bible, Jehovah (or in the Hebrew, Yahweh) Elohim, translated in our version, LORD God. There is a special reason for this change. In Chapter 1 we are dealing with the making of things, and God is presented to us under the name of Elohim, i.e., the Creator. But when man appears on the scene God appears also in a different character. He now appears under the title of Jehovah, which means essentially the covenant-making God, the God Who keeps a promise. It is particularly significant that when God first reveals Himself to this race of ours, it is as a God who intends to keep His promises. (The Making of Man - Genesis 2:4-17)