Canadian author of famous missionary hymn

Canadian E. Margaret Clarkson was born in Saskatchewan in 1915. At age 23, isolated and lonely while teaching in a northern Ontario Canadian mining town and longing to go to the mission field, she was meditating on John 20:21.

She realized she was where God had called her to be.

Clarkson never got to go overseas because of a physical disability.

In her social, emotional, mental and spiritual lonliness that night, this prolific author wrote one of the most famous missionary hymns of the 20th century.

The haunting music of composer John Peterson turned this meditation into one of the most meaningful hymns of my life.

By the time I performed it Peterson’s style was quite ‘out of vogue.’ He wrote for mid-century Protestants, but had a gift of taking scripture and putting it to music that wouldn’t let you go. It still chills me, and I’ve no doubt you could sit a group of teens down and it would hit them. I hear the bass and the alto weaving into the simple melody - and as the words burrow deeper into the performer’s mind - the phrasing takes on the richness of a heart’s cry. You can’t just sing it.

So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing,
So send I you to toil for Me alone.

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O’er wand’ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world aweary-
So send I you to suffer for My sake.

So send I you - to loneliness and longing,
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known;
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one,
So send I you - to know My love alone.

So send I you - to leave your life’s ambitions,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long and love where men revile you,
So send I you - to lose your life in Mine.

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho’ it be blood, to spend and spare not-
So send I you to taste of Calvary.

As Margaret Clarkson matured she recognized we are not called to minister to others in isolation, but in the triumph of God’s sovereignty. In spite of constant pain, she went on to become quite famous - and she re-wrote her hymn, adding these verses:

So send I you-by grace made strong to triumph
O’er hosts of hell, o’er darkness, death, and sin,
My name to bear, and in that name to conquer-
So send I you, My victory to win.

So send I you-to take to souls in bondage
The word or truth that sets the captive free,
To break the bonds of sin, to lost death’s fetters-
So send I you, to bring the lost to Me.

So send I you-My strength to know in weakness,
My joy in grief, My perfect peace in pain,
To prove My power, My grace, My promised presence-
So send I you, eternal fruit to gain.

“As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.”