"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain" - Philippians 1:21 (NIV). 

There is a hymn, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine" common to many with deep insightful meaning worth reflection here. The writer of these lyrics, Fanny Crosby, was an orphan who was diagnosed as blind at age three. She later trained as a musician and would go on to use her lyrical gifts to compose over 8000 hymns!

When she wrote, "Praising my saviour all day long" one might think of a privileged composer boastful of her possessions. Yet if anything aside from her being disabled and unable to write (her compositions and poems would be transcribed by someone else) Fanny was not spared of grief. She lost her only child to typhoid. In spite of her prodigious writings, she was cheated by her publishers and earned just a pittance. In the last years of her life she was found living in poverty.

In spite of a life beset with many hardships, Fanny wrote, "all is at rest," and that "I in my Savior am happy and blest"! The last stanza of one of her best hymns concludes, "Filled with His goodness, lost in His love" to the famous chorus, "This is my story, this is my song!"

Every life has a song. We can choose a tune that constantly complains of our poor run. But Fanny chose otherwise. Once she noted, "It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me. “What a positive and encouraging outlook to life, which is there for all of us

Prayer for today: Lord Father God of Abraham, maker of heaven and earth, today I thank you for the circumstances of my life, of which I find a lot to praise and look to life with hope, this I pray in Jesus's name