****TAKE THE WORLD BUT GIVE ME JESUS

She was a popular, in demand, speaker, with a great sense of humor. 

She was a concert singer, and an accomplished organist and harpist. 

She was the first woman ever, to speak before the Senate, and she was a personal friend to several presidents.

She spent several days a week in Christian mission work in New York’s Bowery district.

Yet, in spite of all the notoriety, Fanny Crosby lived a very difficult life in a New York City tenement building. 

When she was six weeks old, she was completely blinded for life, by a quack doctor.  Her father died when she was a toddler and her mother was left to find meager work as a maid, to provide for their basic needs.  So, she was raised by her grandmother.

Although she didn’t start writing until she was in her mid-40s, she wrote nearly 9000 hymns; approximately one every other day until she died at age 95.

One day when Fanny Crosby was talking to one of her neighbors, he began complaining about his poverty.  “If I had wealth I would be able to do just what I wish to do, and I would be able to make an (impact) in the world.”

(Take a moment to think about that.  That would be like complaining about the inconvenience of a hangnail to a quadruple amputee.)  It probably wasn’t a good idea for him to whine like that to Fanny Crosby.  She replied, “Well, YOU can TAKE THE WORLD, BUT GIVE ME JESUS.” 

That conversation inspired her and, within a few hours, she had written the song. 

Every stanza starts with that same phrase.  It reminds us of Paul’s words, “…I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” (Phil. 3:8)

In the last verse, she employed a signature theme that appears in many of her hymns, “… in His cross my trust shall be, till with clearer, brighter vision, face to face my Lord I see!”

Fanny once told her mother, "if I had a choice, I would choose to remain blind ... for when I die; the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my blessed Saviour."