"To God Be the Glory"

 

Fanny Crosby wrote thousands of hymns in her life, but one of her best known is “To God Be the Glory.” The words make it clear that she is glorifying God for his greatest gift of all, the sacrifice of His own son for our salvation.

Still, she seems to have given Him glory throughout her life whatever the circumstances she found herself in. That includes the loss of her sight in infancy.

Like Fanny Crosby, my primary reason for giving God the glory is because He sacrificed Jesus on the cross for my salvation, as well as for yours. Unlike Fanny, I’m not blind. And that’s another reason to give God the glory.

Four months ago I went in to get cataract surgery on my right eye and came out worse than when I went in. I don’t understand the process very well, but my impression is that they had removed the cataract and were either removing the rest of the natural lens or inserting the new one when the lens shattered in my eye. The eye hemorrhaged, and they couldn’t see all the pieces under the blood to get them out. It took a second surgery by a retina specialist to do that, and I thank God for both the specialist and for the successful operation. Dr. Pelzek put in a new lens at the same time, but the eye took three months to heal.

It was a tense three months, partly because I couldn’t drive at first. Fortunately, most of the places I had to go were ones I could walk to, and Roland and my sister-in-law drove me to the rest. As the eye improved, I did begin driving again. I wore a pair of old glasses to improve my distance sight, but I had to take them off to read, and even then I had to hold what I was reading close to my face.

My sight did get progressively better, but I will always need corrective lenses. I waited another month for those, first for an appointment with the optometrist, and then for the glasses themselves to arrive.

They came a week ago Friday. Yes, my eyesight isn’t perfect even with them, and it will probably never be quite as good as it would have been if the first surgery had gone correctly. And I still have to get cataract surgery on my left eye, although I will wait until after my son’s wedding for that. But a week ago Sunday I sat in church and could read the bulletin and see the hymns at a normal length from my face with my glasses on, and I could make out the facial features of the pastors in the front of the church. Needless to say, I was thrilled.

So I’m praising God for my sight.

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I don’t know who took this photo, but it was apparently taken when Fanny Crosby was in her 80s. (She died a little over a month before her 95^th birthday.) The photo is in the public domain because of its age.