Fanny Crosby, who wrote at least 8,500 hymns–including this one–was blinded by a doctor’s error when she was only six weeks old. Later in life she said she was grateful to God for her blindness, because it enabled her to see Him without distraction.
She made it clear to her family that she wanted only the smallest and most modest marker on her grave. P.T. Barnum, it seems, was buried nearby under an enormous monument that Fanny thought distasteful.
But she already had a much bigger monument than Barnum would ever have–thousands and thousands of hymns that are sung by millions of Christians to this day.