Years ago the music leaders at our church, used to ask for hymn requests from the congregation on Sunday nights. Showing 'restraint' MOST of the time, I'd let others make their requests but sometimes I couldn't resist the urge to request #444 in the old Baptist Hymnal. Every time I hear that song and one of thousands of others composed by the same hymnist since then, I think of her.
Her earliest days were tragic. Born in 1820 she was blinded at six weeks of age by an incompetent eye surgeon. Her father John died when she was yet an infant. Her mother Mercy, distraught by her husband's death and the situation with her daughter, went to work to provide for the family and her mother became the little girl's primary caregiver.
No one would have dreamed that the little blind girl would go on to get an education and become an honored teacher at the school for the blind she was educated at. She would write poetry that would be set to music by some of the greatest composers of the time that would bless the hearts of amplified millions around the world for going on two centuries now!
During the course of her feisty ninety-four years Fanny Crosby wrote over 8,000 hymns like, 'Blessed Assurance Jesus Is Mine' 'Safe in the Arms of Jesus' 'Rescue the Perishing' 'All the Way my Savior Leads Me' 'To God Be the Glory' 'Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross' and this one that I always requested...'Redeemed How I Love to Proclaim It!' I hope you enjoy this fun, Celtic, young person version of it! I think Fanny would!!