Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
John 20:19-21
Margaret Clarkson told this story about her most famous hymn, “So Send I You”:
When I graduated as a teacher in 1935, jobs were so scarce that I had to go to the far north of Ontario to get work. Seven long years were to pass before I could move to a position in my home city of Toronto. I was reading in John’s gospel one cold night in February, 1938, in the mining town of Kirkland Lake where I was teaching, when suddenly the words of John 20:21 leaped from the page. As I pondered on their significance, God seemed to speak to me. I had long known that because of a physical disability I could never go to the mission field, but that night God seemed to say to me that this lonely spot was where he had put me—my mission field. I wrote the first version of “So Send I You” that evening. Little did I think that it would one day be sung all over the world as a missionary hymn!
The words to the first verse of this song are these:
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.
Every Christian does not go to the foreign mission field, but every Christian is commissioned and sent to carry the gospel everywhere and share it with everyone he meets. Just as Jesus willingly came to this world to be our Savior, we must be willing to take His message to those who still have not heard, regardless of the cost.
