Safe In the Arms of Jesus

And He took them up in His arms, laid His hands on them, and blessed them.

Mark 10:16

On March 5, 1858, Fanny Crosby, the blind hymnist and America's "Queen of Gospel Songs," quietly married Alexander Van Alsteine. A year later, the couple suffered a tragedy that shook the deepest regions of Fanny's heart.

She gave birth to a child-no one knows if it was a boy or a girl. In later years, she never spoke about it except to say in her oral biography, "God gave us a tender babe," and "soon the angels came down and took our infant up to God and His throne."

One of Fanny's relatives, Florence Paine, lived with the poet for six years and could never get her to talk about this. The child's death seemed to have devastated her, and she privately bore her sadness all her life.

Years later, on April 30, 1868, musician Howard Doane knocked on the door of Fanny's apartment in Manhattan. "I have exactly forty minutes," he said, "before I must meet a train for Cincinnati. I have a tune for you. See if it says anything to you. Perhaps you can commit it to memory and then compose a poem to match it." He then hummed the tune.

Fanny clapped her hands and said, "Why, it says, 'Safe in the Arms of Jesus!'" She retreated to the other room of her tiny apartment, knelt on the floor, and asked God to giver her the words quickly. Within half an hour, she had composed the poem in her mind and dictated it to Doane, who dashed off to catch his train.

During her lifetime, "Safe in the Arms of Jesus" was among the most widely sung of Fanny's hymns, and she considered it in a class by itself. She claimed it was written for the bereaved, especially for mothers who had lost children. Often when comforting a grief-stricken mother, she would say, "Remember, my dear, your darling cherub is safe in the arms of Jesus." Minister John Hall in New York told Fanny that her hymn had given more "peace and satisfaction to mothers who have lost their children than any other hymn I have ever known."

It isn't hard to understand why:

Safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on His gentle breast;

There by His love o'ershaded, sweetly my soul to rest.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul