Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-20-14

I want to tell you about two remarkable women.

Fanny Crosby’s name is known by some people today, but her great number of gospel songs fill the hymnbooks of many denominations, and the airwaves even today, sung in every musical style you can think of. She lived almost 95 years (1820-1915) and was a prominent poet and librettist until about the age of 45. Then she began writing lyrics for hymns. Before she died she wrote almost 9000 hymns, many of them, as I said, familiar today.

These and many other works were accomplished despite the fact that Fanny Crosby was blind. Little Frances had an eye infection as a baby in Brewster NY, was mistreated with medicines, and thereafter had no sight. It was a handicap she endured without complaint, testifying that if she had “normal” sight she “might not have so good an education or have so great an influence, and certainly not so fine a memory.” She further testified that “when I get to heaven, the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior.”

She was a teacher of blind students at an institution in New York City – where her secretary, transcribing her dictated poems, was a teenaged future president, Grover Cleveland – and a published poet, a librettist for opera-style stage cantatas, author of patriotic works during the Civil War, and an evangelist. She shared the gospel message from street corners to rescue missions to crusade meetings.

Fanny Crosby wrote words for her hymns, and seldom the music. Dozens of prominent and amateur composers provided the music to her miraculously simple but profound verses. In fact many of her poems were published under assumed names, so hymnbooks could maintain the appearance of variety. She and her husband, a blind organist, shared evangelistic work.

She never received more than five dollars for a song, and routinely much less; sometimes nothing. While her songsheets sold millions, she invariably lived in poverty. She was befriended by many, including Ira Sankey, the “music man” in D. L. Moody crusades in the US and England; but whatever money she made through her long career she did not tithe – she usually gave away half, sometimes all, of income receipts, to churches or missions. In New York City she served at the Bowery Mission, and lived in extreme poverty in places like the Tenderloin District or Hell’s Kitchen.

If you don’t know Fanny Crosby’s name, you might know her hymns including “Blessed Assurance,” “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,” “Safe in the Arms of God,” “Near the Cross,” “Jesus is Calling,” and “He Hideth My Soul.” She is buried in a humble cemetery outside Bridgeport CT, her modest gravestone telling the world: “Aunt Fanny: She hath done what she could.”

When I met Cliff Barrows of the Billy Graham Crusades, he told me how the words of Fanny Crosby had touched his life, sometimes with the impact of Bible verses themselves. That day I had with me an old copy of Fanny’s autobiography, “Memories of Eighty Years,” and I presented it to him. A jewel-encrusted heirloom would not have meant more to him; it was impressive to see evidence of how, indeed, he had been touched by Fanny Crosby in his life.

Fanny never considered her affliction a handicap, and she did not complain about her poverty. She wanted to write hymns; and, in countless humble missions and fetid soup kitchens, she wanted to share Jesus with “her boys.” Her work lives on, beyond the people she met, in the hymns that still affect listeners today.

The other woman we visit today was Fanny’s contemporary and, like her, a poet, evangelist, missions worker, when these activities were uncommon, in churches and in general society, for women. She also suffered physical affliction, and wrote the words to at least one hymn of great fame and comfort to generations of people. Katherine Hankey, 1834-1911, was born in London and did all her work in England except for a period as a young woman, as an evangelist in “darkest Africa.”

Katherine’s father was a prosperous banker, so she never endured the privations of a Fanny Crosby. Yet she caught the evangelistic zeal – despite her staid Anglican roots – and preached on street corners of poor urban neighborhoods, in factories, and at docks. While only in her thirties she contracted a disease that had doctors confine her to bed, not merely her house.

Her greatest regret over this news of a life-threatening illness was that she could not preach, share the Word, and talk about the love of Jesus to “her boys.” She determined, if she had to find an alternative, to write what was on her heart. From a very long poem grew the verses that embodied her zeal to “tell the old, old story.”

Two women in two cities, two different societies – different from each other; different from today, especially regarding the role of women – both challenged by horrible afflictions, but overcoming them. Gloriously.

Their biographies are lessons for us all, not only contemporary women, young or old. They are inspirations to what we may do as fighters in the arenas of life, as warriors wielding the gentle weapons of God’s love and mercy.

Two women speak, and sing, to us over the many years. One, blind, wrote, “Tell Me the Story of Jesus.” The other, weak and bedridden, wrote, “I Love To Tell the Story.”

Two women’s stories are… one story. The story of Jesus and His love.

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The separate but equal testimonies of two remarkable women live on through two powerful and beloved gospel songs. As musical sermons they have touched the lives of millions since they were written in quiet and humble circumstances by two servants of God.

Click: Tell Me the Story of Jesus – I Love To Tell the Story

7-16-12

Madison Square Park. An almost magical piece of Manhattan, an oasis of greenery, specialized flower gardens, benches, fountains, statues, and winding little pathways. On sunny but cool, clean-air, New York City Spring days, as it was when I visited recently, it seems Heaven-like, miles and maybe ages away from urban bustle.

The original city planners of grid-like Manhattan streets mercifully retained old Broadway, which cuts diagonally through the island, creating numerous triangles of arterial anomalies. They can be small, like Herald Square to the north, one-fifth of an acre; or spacious, like Madison Square Park. Bordered by Broadway, Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street, and Madison Avenue’s terminus, the Park is larger than six acres. In its neighborhood were the first two Madison Square Gardens; P. T. Barnum’s Museum; the pioneering Fifth Avenue Hotel and A. T. Stewart Department Store; the iconic Metropolitan Life Building; and, at its southern end, the Flatiron Building. During the 1880s the Park hosted the tallest structure in New York City: the arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, placed there for visitors to climb, in a plan to raise funds for the statue’s base and erection in New York Harbor.

It sounds idyllic and is indeed full of history, but when I grew up in New York City, Madison Square Park suffered from neglect. And when I taught at the nearby School of Visual Arts in the 1990s, it had become an ugly, smelly, unsafe place to be. So on my recent visit to New York, I was happily surprised to see the results of a decade-long project and conservancy by the city and neighborhood groups.

Fortified with an appropriate park-bench repast – pushcart hot dogs – I sat back and enjoyed the place and time, not quite sure that place and time did not elude me, albeit engagingly. Was it a remnant of the old days that an evident homeless couple sat on a nearby bench, chattering and sharing an old piece of bread? But a mom or nanny passed by with a high-tech baby carriage, and I thought, That child is entering a nicer world than if she were here 20 years ago. And a young woman sat down on another nearby bench and started playing the guitar and singing songs I could not quite hear. All seemed beautiful. The way a city should be?

I was briefly blinded by the reflection of the sun on the gold facing of the old MetLife Building. I was aware, suddenly, of a man sitting next to me. It seemed he knew what I was thinking; but after all, I had been looking around earnestly, taking note of all I could. He shared my appreciation of nature’s glory that afternoon, and then commented on the same things I had paused to notice.

The old man and woman I had dismissed as forlorn homeless drifters? He said that they were, indeed, homeless; and neither had found much happiness over their long lives. But they met in the Bowery Mission downtown and became the best of friends, even falling in love. What made the world look away, they somehow found attractive in each other; and there was not a happier couple in all of Madison Square Park.

The baby in the bionic carriage? Her parents had split in an ugly scene, the father never to return and the mother addicted to an assortment of drugs. The relatives caring for the baby girl would not be able to continue for long. The young woman singing with her guitar, hoping for coins to be dropped into the shoebox? The words to her song – all of a sudden I could discern them – were about a hopeless life, lost love, and what she called her death-sentence of AIDs.

“So you are saying,” I asked the man, “that nothing here is as pleasant as it seems? Is there darkness behind every image?” No, he answered – just look at the joy in the homeless couple I showed you. And you do well, he told me, to have your spirits lifted by a beautiful day, and signs of happiness. But life’s problems, unlike a city park, cannot be solved by paving the pathways and planting some flowers – anyway, we cannot stop there. Accept the improvements, take heart from the joy… but remember that people still hurt, people still hurt each other, people still need Words that will transform their souls, not merely adjust their daily routines.

He swept his hands across the landscape of the park, and then, upwards, to the thousands of apartment windows that overlooked Madison Square Park, behind each a separate story. I could hear, and I quickly saw, that the man was crying, tears glistening on his cheeks. I looked up at the windows, knowing that his wise words were meant to remind me to appreciate the “good,” to see the “special” that was seldom readily apparent; but never to lose sight of hurt and pain and heartache: the needs of our neighbors.

I looked back, and of course the stranger was gone. I didn’t bother to look around or behind me. I believe angels visit us; and even Jesus can bring messages – “as you do it to the least of these, you do unto Me” applies to the love that lies behind the compassion shown through, say, bandages or meals. My visitor’s words lifted me up, not let me down, that afternoon.

Jesus wept (it is recorded in John 11:35) when He approached the dead Lazarus. We cannot believe Christ was affected by death, because He was about to raise the man back to life. And He knew that after a short time He too would die… and overcome death. We may wonder whether Jesus wept because sin had claimed another life; “the wages of sin is death,” and that He had come that people might have life and have it more abundantly – weeping over peoples’ wasted opportunities. Or He might have wept over the grieving friends and relatives of Lazarus, who scarcely realized that Jesus was in their midst. The Lord and Giver of life.

They became victims of their own superficial perceptions.

Jesus wept, and I believe He still does. People are still lost in sin, hurting, hurting each other, and needing the Word. Will they find it through sunny afternoons and fragrant flower gardens, or will they hear it from us? We should weep, too.

I have cried many more times in my life since becoming a Christian. Tears of joy, yes, but also of burning conviction. And seeing hurting souls I never saw – that way – before. Sometimes the most eloquent prayers we can pray are wordless. “He Understands My Tears,” a songwriter wrote. Another song states it well: God sometimes washes our eyes with tears, that we might better see.

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Yet another gospel song carries this theme – and illustrates the eloquence of Jesus’ weeping. Have you ever noticed how teardrops, just like raindrops, when you look closely, can reflect whole new visions of the world, a different reality, multiple images, brighter colors?

Click: Tears Are a Language God Understands