Can you tell the insurance is on my mind?  Yesterday I wrote about “Insurance and Reinsurance” and today the ‘I’ word pops up again.  I promise you today’s post isn’t focused on premiums, claims, and benefits…

Several years ago I was sitting in front of a family with a little boy during a worship service.  We were singing hymns as part of our worship service and I was enjoying singing and listening to the family behind me.  I particularly enjoy hearing voices of little children singing along in worship.  On this day we were singing “Blessed Assurance” and I heard the little boy belt out “Blessed insurance, Jesus is mind…”

Kids and their misinterpretations of some of our Bible words can be pretty entertaining, but sometimes adults get the wrong impression too.  Stop and think for a moment.  Do you consider God’s love to be insurance or assurance?

Insurance is defined as “a thing providing protection against a possible eventuality.”  Assurance is “the state of being sure or certain about something” and “a strong and definite statement that something will happen or that something is true.”  Did you catch the difference?

If we view God’s love as ‘insurance’ we are treating it as a backup plan, or something that protects us in a worst case scenario, something we fall back on.  Assurance on the other hand is a prevailing confidence and trust that we take with us every day.  Insurance is something we run to when times are bad.  Assurance is something we carry with us all the time to encourage, motivate, and soothe us.

The words of the hymn “Blessed Assurance” by Fannie J. Crosby sum it up well –

“Blessed assurance Jesus is mine!  O what a foretaste of glory divine.  Heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His spirit washed in His blood.  This is my story, this is my song.  Praising my Savior all the day long.”

Crosby was a prolific hymn writer with almost 8,000 hymns credited to her.  As an infant she was blinded in both eyes by a treatment for a severe cold that was administered by a man posing as a doctor.  Her father died when she was 1 and she was raised by her mother and grandmother with three other siblings.

Frances Jane Crosby attended the New York School for the Blind from age 15 to 22.  Upon completion of schooling she wrote the first of her three published books and lobbied for the rights of the blind.  At age 27 she returned to the school to teach English and History.

Crosby penned her first hymn at age 44 and was known to write 6-7 hymns a day.  She was under contract with a publisher to write 2-3 hymns a week but produced so many the publisher used as many as 100 pen names to avoid devaluing her name.  “Blessed Assurance” was written in a matter of minutes when she heard the chorus a friend had written originally named “Assurance.”  It is among the most popular Christian hymns ever written.

It is truly a blessing to know with certainty that God has given us His assurance.  This week the Dinnertime Devotional focuses on assurance.  God bless you in your time of study as a family >>> Dinnertime Devotionals 6