Читать книгу Sisters In Song; Women Hymn Writers - Leslie Clay - Страница 18

1915-2008

“So Send I You”

Margaret grew up in Toronto, raised by unhappy parents who divorced when she was beginning her teen years. Her memories of childhood were of fear and insecurity. Throughout her life, she was plagued by the pain of migraine headaches, and often bedridden by juvenile arthritis. But she learned to love church hymns and poetry. She published her first poem when she was ten years old. She earned a teacher’s degree and for thirty-eight years she taught elementary school in Ontario. She also served as the music supervisor of six large schools. She loved writing, and for good reason: she was good at it. Her greatest love was writing hymns. She wrote, “Writing a hymn is more than using certain techniques correctly. It is a matter of looking on the face of God.” Over her life, she published seventeen books, hundreds of poems, articles, songs and sketches. At its 1992 national convention, The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada named her a Fellow of the Society in recognition of her prolific works and contribution to hymnody.

She wrote her most notable hymn at age twenty-three. She was an isolated teacher in a gold mining camp in northern Ontario. Her isolation was mental, cultural and spiritual. She said, “Studying the word one night and thinking of the loneliness of my situation, I came to John 20:21 and the words ‘so send I you.’ Because of a physical disability, I could never go to the mission field, and this was where He had sent me.” She wrote the first draft of her hymn. Years later, she revised it to reflect greater acceptance and joy over God’s plan for her.