 Jack's Giant Harmonica Hymnbook
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So Send I You
This hymn has been labeled by many evangelical leaders as the finest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. It was first published in 1954 after having been written sixteen years earlier by a Canadian school teacher, Margaret Clarkson. About this hymn she writes:
"In 1935 teaching jobs were so scarce that I had to take my first job as a teacher in a lumber camp some 1400 miles from home, out in the Rainy River District of northwestern Ontario. From there I moved to the gold mining camp of Kirkland Lake, 450 miles north of Toronto. In all, I spent seven years in the north. I experienced loneliness of every kind; mental, cultural, but particularly spiritual, for in all of those seven yeaars I never found real Christian fellowship - churches were modern and born-again Christians almost non-existent.
I was studying the Word one night and meditating on the loneliness of my situation and came in my reading to John 20, and the words 'So send I you'. Because of a physical disability I knew that I could never go to the mission field, but God seemed to tell me that night that this was my mission field, and this was where He had sent me. I was then twenty-hree, in my third year of teaching. I had written and published verse all of my life, so it was natural to put my thoughts into verse."
4 4 4 5
So send I you
4 4 4 -4 4 4 -3
to la-bor un-re-ward-ed,
-4 -4 -4 -5 -4 -4
To serve un-paid, un-loved,
-4 4 -4 5
un-sought, un-known,
5 5 5 6
To bear re-buke,
5 5 5 -5 5 5 -4
to suf-fer scorn and scoff-ing,
-4 5 -5 5 4 4 5 -4 4 4
So send I you, to toil for me a-lone.
-5 -5 5 5 5 -4 -3 6
As the Fa-ther hath se-nt Me,
4 5 -4 4 4
S-o send I you.
verse 2
So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O'erwand'ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burden of a world aweary
So send I you to suffer for my sake.
verse 3
So send I you to loneliness and longing,
With heart ahung'ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one
So send I you to know My love alone.
verse 4
So send I you to leave your life's ambition,
To die to dear desire, selfwill resign,
To labor long and love where men revile you
So send I you to lose your life in Mine.
