“So Send I You”
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 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.
Edith Margaret Clarkson died this date, 3/17/2008 in her native Canada but not her native Province. She was born in Melville, Saskatchewan (6/8/1915) but passed away in a nursing home in Toronto, Ontario.
“We come, O Christ, to Thee,” Margaret (her preferred name) saw as her first proper hymn. It was sung at the first Missionary Conference of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and published in 1957.
Miss Clarkson, who was converted to Christ at age ten (a conversion influenced by Pilgrim’s Progress) became a primary schoolteacher (some 38 years) who was known for her evangelical faith. She was a poet of nature (she was a “birder”) but she also penned some 100 hymns. These were put together in 1986 in book called, A Singing Heart. Her tastes in other writers included Watts, Newton and Havergal.
Separate-Holy 