Hymn Story: Children of the heavenly Father
Children of the heavenly Father was written by Caroline W. Sandell Berg. She was born in 1832 Sweden and known as Lina Sandell, the “Fanny Crosby of Sweden.” “Lina”.
She wrote hymns partly to cope with the fact that she witnessed her pastor father’s tragic death by drowning. She is said to have been very close to her father and wrote 650 hymns. She died in 1903.
Ernst W. Olson prepared the English translation for the 1925 Hymnal of the Lutheran Augustana Synod. As editor, writer, poet, and translator, Olson made a valuable contribution to Swedish-American culture and to church music. His family immigrated to Nebraska when he was five years old, but he spent much of his life in the Chicago area. He was editor of several Swedish-American newspapers and spent most of his professional career as an editor for the Augustana Book Concern. He also contributed four original hymns and twenty-eight translations to The Hymnal (1925) of the Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod and served on the committee that produced the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal (1958).
He died in 1958.