My God’s Enough
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
My church’s hymnal has many songs by one lyricist. You may recognize some like “Blessed Assurance,” “To God Be the Glory,” “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross,” and “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” The author of these familiar hymns, and many others, is Fanny Crosby poet, teacher to the blind, activist in rescue work, and musician.[1] She was extremely prolific, writing more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs.[2] Her work was so influential that Ira Sankey credited her with much of the success of his and Dwight L. Moody’s revival campaigns in the late 19th century.[3]
Fanny was born in Brewster, New York, on March 24, 1820, to a family tracing its history back to the Mayflower. As a tiny baby, just six weeks old, she was treated with a mMustard poultice to help with an eye infection. The results were disastrous. According to her doctors her optic nerves were damaged, and she was pronounced incurably blind. Modern medical opinion is that she was most likely congenitally blind, but, due to her age, no one had noticed prior to her illness and subsequent treatment. Fanny’s story is a mixture of tragedy and success.[4] Deeply committed to her faith, she used her formidable talents to fulfill her most lasting purpose, to evangelize every person she could reach. As Robert Morgan put it, she “…set a goal of winning a million people to Christ through her hymns, and whenever she wrote a hymn she prayed it would bring women and men to Christ, and kept careful records of those reported to have been saved through her hymns.”[5]
Her writing was not universally appreciated:
According to Glimpses of Christian History, Crosby’s “hymns have sometimes been criticized as ‘gushy and mawkishly sentimental’ and critics have often attacked both her writing and her theology. Nonetheless, they were meaningful to her contemporaries and hymn writer George C. Stebbins stated, ‘There was probably no writer in her day who appealed more to the valid experience of the Christian life or who expressed more sympathetically the deep longings of the human heart than Fanny Crosby.’ And many of her hymns have stood the test of time, still resonating with believers today”.[6]
As a writer I find her approach to her craft as fascinating as the rest of her story. She composed all her lyrics in her mind, often working on a dozen hymns or more at the same time. Since Crosby needed help with her writing due to her blindness, she would then dictate them to be transcribed.[7] Her husband, Alexander (Van) van Alstyne Jr., her sister Carolyn Ryder, or her secretary Eva C. Cleveland all helped bring her words from her head to the printed page. She claimed that she wrote the melody for only one of her hymns, “Spring Hymn.” Her lyrics, both sacred and secular, were set to music by several well-known composers of her day, most notably Ira Sankey.
Fanny Crosby passed away at the age of 94 on February 12, 1915. At her request the inscription on her headstone reads, “Aunt Fanny: She hath done what she could; Fanny J. Crosby.”[8] In 1975 she was inducted posthumously into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Known as the “Queen of Gospel Song Writers,” this remarkable woman’s lyrics are still sung today not only in America but around the world.
One of her hymns, “Take the World, but Give Me Jesus,” brings the theme of Psalm 86 to mind as it echoes David’s desire to find his hope and solace in his Lord.[9] In the second verse of the hymn, Fanny Crosby wrote:
Take the world, but give me Jesus,
Sweetest comfort of my soul;
With my Savior watching o’er me,
I can sing, though billows roll.
Compare that to verses two and three of Psalm 86:
Guard my life, for I am faithful to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord,
for I call to you all day long.
Both musicians look to the Lord of lords as their refuge and comfort. Both know His mercy in the middle of the world’s chaos. Both know and express that their ultimate hope, allegiance, and trust lie not in the world but in the Lord who created it.
Although these two sacred songs are some 3000 years apart in time, both focus our attention on the presence of the Lord as the central joy of our lives. David writes, “Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you” (Ps. 86:4) and Crosby replies, “Take the world, but give me Jesus; All its Joys are but a name, But His love abideth ever, Through eternal years the same” (1st verse). Prophetically, David looked forward to the coming King (Acts 2:29-32). Crosby looks back to His first coming and anticipates His second even as all who believe in the Lord Jesus are privileged to do (I Cor. 13:12; Rev. 22:4).
As we learn about prayer from this Psalm let us never forget that the Lord David cries out to is the same Lord that the author of Hebrews wrote of: “… let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. ….” (Heb. 12:1-2). Let that truth imbue our prayers with the certain knowledge that we are among those who say, “Take this world but give me Jesus”!
Reflection Questions:
1. Were you familiar with Fanny Crosby’s hymns before reading this post? If so, which of her lyrics did you recognize immediately?
2. Look at Philippians 3:8. Do you think “Take the World, but Give Me Jesus” illustrate the Apostle’s thoughts? Why?
3. We know how rich in meaning the Psalms can be. Do you habitually connect the Lord of the Psalms with Jesus? As Acts 2:29-32 points out David was a prophet. Can you identify his gift of prophecy at work in his Psalms? (Hint: look at Psalm 133 to get started.)
(Photo description and credit: The beauty of nature and our place in it is a blessing from the creation. But our world is broken, see Romans 8:19-22. We must not confuse the hope of Earth with the hope of Heaven. One is passing away (Matt. 24:35) and the other is eternal (Phil. 3:20-21). Credit: Photo by Sandy Swanner, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, August 2026.)
[1] Fanny Crosby’s mission work overview comes from The Bowery Mission website.
[2] The exact number of sacred songs she wrote is difficult to document thanks to several factors including many having been published under pseudonymspseudonym and incomplete records of her works. Estimates for her entire output varies from 5500 to 9000 with 8000 being the most common estimate.
[4] Most of my biographical information is from the abovementioned article about her on Wikipedia. Her story, whether abbreviated to an encyclopedia entry or from one of the biographies or autobiographies written about her life and career (see bibliography in Wikipedia), is well worth deeper study.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] She was unable to do more than write her own name and was known to have signed legal documents with an X.
[8] Fanny Crosby – Wikipedia. Additionally, “Aunt Fanny” was the name she was best known by in the slums of New York City where she lived and worked for many years among the most needy of the city’s citizens.
[9] “Take the World but Give Me Jesus”: lyrics or listen to a performance of the hymn.
