Edith Margaret Clarkson, usually known as Margaret Clarkson, was a Canadian best known for her hymn, “So Send I You.” “Billy Graham has called [it] ‘the finest hymn of our generation.'” (Mennonite Weekly Review). “Later in life, she rejected it as ‘spiritually immature,’ and begged churches to replace it with some newly-written lines.” (Ottawa Citizen).
The original version opens:
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.
The revised version begins:
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.
More info at https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/so-send-i-you
Clarkson suffered from pain throughout her life. “Though I have besought God earnestly for healing, He has not seen fit to touch my body with a miracle. His working in me has been more intimate – He has touched my spirit and is working His miracle there” (Calgary Herald).
From the Wheaton Archives:
Margaret Clarkson, whose rarely-used first name is Edith, was born in 1915 into, as Margaret herself described, “a loveless and unhappy marriage” which broke up when she was twelve. The memories of her childhood were of tension, fear, insecurity, and isolation. Margaret was born in Melville, Saskatchewan where she lived until her parents, Frederick and Ethel, and the family moved to Toronto when she was around age four. Throughout her life, she was plagued by pain; initially from migraines, accompanied by convulsive vomiting, and then arthritis—two ailments that accompanied her continually. In Destined for Glory, she related sadly that her mother told her that her first words were “my head hurts.” At age three Margaret, or Margie as her friends knew her, contracted juvenile arthritis and became bed bound. She recalled the pain as well as the bald spot worn on the back of her head from lying in bed so long.
