Sadhu Sundar Singh
1889-1929 20th century
Desiring God himself rather than his gifts, and making the whole road a prayer.
Who was Sadhu Sundar Singh?
Son of a Sikh family in Punjab, in revolt after his mother's death he burned a Bible; a few days later, on the night he had resolved to die, he saw the living Christ and surrendered. Baptized at sixteen, he put on the saffron robe of the sadhus and took to the roads barefoot, from India to Tibet, with no luggage but a New Testament. He set out in the spring of 1929 toward the Himalayas and never came back.
In their own words
I seek from Thee no other gift but Thyself, who art the Giver of life and all its blessings. Thee alone do I desire and long for, and where Thou art, there is Heaven.
The hunger and the thirst of this heart of mine can be satisfied only with Thee who hast given it birth.
Although fish spend their whole life in the salt water of the sea, they do not themselves become salty, because they have life in them; so the man of prayer, though he has to live in this sin-defiled world, remains free of its taint, because by means of prayer his life is maintained.