The Attitude of Gratitude....series

This week we begin a new series. This will come from the booklet - "The Attitude of Gratitude.. Developing a Thankful Heart" by Nancy Leigh DeMoss 

I will do my best to have a portion of this book each Friday morning. So please keep coming back to read the next part of this very insightful book. I think we all could do with more gratitude in our lives. What do you think?
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By today's standards, she should have been an unhappy, troubled woman. Her father died when she was quite young, leaving her to be raised by her mother and grandmother. As a result of a doctor's careless error when she was only six weeks old, she was afflicted with lifelong blindness.

The tragic and traumatic experiences of this woman's childhood years would have given most people more than enough grounds for a lifetime of pelf-pity, bitterness, and psychological disorders.

Yet, in her autobiography, Frances Jane Crosby wrote, "It seemed intended by the blessed Providence of God that I should be blink all my life, and I think Him for the dispensation."

The doctor who destroyed her sight never forgave himself and moved from the area, but there was no room in Fanny Crosby's heart for resentment. "If I could meet him now," she wrote, "I would say 'Thank you, thank you'---over and over again--for making me blind."

Te blindness that many would have considered at best an accident, and at worst a curse, was considered by Fanny to be one of her greatest blessings. She accepted her blindness as a gift from God. "I could not have written thousands of hymns.' she said, if I had been hindered by the distractions of seeing all the interesting and beautiful objects that would have been presented to my notice."

Fanny's first poem, written when she was eight years old, reflects the perspective that was hers until her death at the age of ninety-five;

Oh, what a happy child I am,

Although I cannot see!

I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be.

How man blessings I enjoy

That other people don't!

So weep or sign because I'm blind,

I cannot, nor I won't!

 

For over a century, the Church has reaped the rich benefits of one woman's thankful heart, as we sing "To God Be the Glory," "Blessed Assurance," "Redeemed," "All the Way My Saviour Leads Me," and countless others of the 8000 songs that Fanny Cosby wrote in her lifetime.  

 

In a world that has forgotten how to be grateful, the example of this beloved, blind hymn-writer seems extraordinary, if not downright odd!

 

But, oh, what a price we pay for our personal and collective ingratitude. After more than two decades of ministry to hurting people, I have come to believe that a failure to give thanks is at the heart of much, if not most, of the sense of gloom, despair, and despondency that is so pervasive even among believers today.

 

Furthermore, many of the sins that are plaguing and devastating our society can be traced back to the oft-undetected root of unthankfulness.

 

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Be sure and come back next week as we continue with this book. :O)