The name "Singh" comes from the Sanskrit word for "lion." In Rampur, India in 1889, a baby was born into a prosperous, respected, and devoutly Sikh family and named Sadhu Sundar Singh. During the next 40 or so years before his death which occurred at a time and place and under circumstances which were never discovered by his family and friends he proved that he had a lion's heart. Although Sikh, Sundar's family arranged for him to be educated by mission aries. When he was 13, his mother died and he became almost inconsolable in his grief and longing for peace. He railed against Christians and the Christian faith, and in his need to end the unrest of soul he was feeling, seriously considered committing suicide. In despair, he rose one morning at 3 am, took a ritual cold bath, and began to pray to the God whose existence he doubted, begging for assurance that God was actually there. He was amazed when a light began to shine; it grew brighter and brighter and then he discerned at its heart the form of the resurrected Christ. Later, Sundar said he had never seen such a loving countenance. The joy and peace he had been seeking were suddenly his in abundance. This was not such good news to his family, though, and he was forced to leave his privileged home. Nevertheless, he claimed the promise, "There is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for my sake and the Gospel's, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time. . .and in the age to come, eternal life." Sundar became an evangelist, and traveled across India boldly sharing the message of Christ. And before he died, his father came to share his faith and they were joyfully reconciled. He was an exceptionally popular and an exceptionally unpopular person, all at once. In some quarters, with his radiant smile and gentleness of spirit and his desire to serve quietly, without fame or fortune, he was so admired that he has been called "the Mother Teresa figure of his day." But in others, he was reviled and ill-treated. He endured being stripped of his clothing and locked into stocks, with leeches dumped over his body; being locked in a deep and noisome well until he was seemingly miraculously delivered from it; having his arm broken by the authorities who sentenced him to a horrible death in the well, and finding it healed when he was drawn up by someone who then vanished. When he left home, his family had disowned him but given him food for his journey; but they had poisoned it. Nevertheless, he had managed to get to his mission school before collapsing, and there he'd been nursed back to health. Later, speaking of the mysteries of the faith, he uttered some eminently quotable truths. He said things like, "Salt, when dissolved in water, may disappear, but it does not cease to exist. We can be sure of its presence by tasting the water. Likewise, the indwelling Christ, though unseen, will be made evident to others from the love which he imparts to us" and "God's patience is infinite. Men, like small kettles, boil quickly with wrath at the least wrong. Not so God. If God were as wrathful, the world would have been a heap of ruins long ago" and "Each of us should follow our calling and carry on our work according to our God-given gifts and capacities. The same breath is blown into the flute, cornet, bagpipe, but different music is produced according to the different instruments. In the same way, the one Spirit works in us, God's children, but different results are produced, and God is glorified through them according to each one's temperament and personality." Singh felt a compulsion to serve God in Tibet. There, he told stories parables, really that described how much God loves all people. Once, he himself compassionately and almost accidentally acted out such a parable. It happened while he and a Tibetan companion were attempting to cross a snowy Himalayan mountain pass in bitter cold and wind. As they struggled to fight off the "sleep of death," they stumbled over a mound in their path, and discovered it was a snow-covered, exhausted man. While his companion stumbled on, trying to save himself, Sundar paused, did what he could for the man there on the trail, then managed to rise and lift the half-frozen man to his back. As it turned out, the exertion of carrying someone else acted to warm him; and the heat he was generating provided life-giving warmth to the victim, as well. They managed to reach a village but before they got there, they passed on the path the frozen body of the man who had chosen to go on, rather than stop and help someone else. It was in Tibet that the earthly life of Sadhu Sundar Singh came to an end. No one ever knew what had happened to keep him from returning from his last missionary expedition. But, though by now his health had begun to fail, he had once again answered an inner summons to the "roof of the world." And out of that high, cold air, he had made his final journey to an entirely sunny and better world. You can access a copy of a major writing by Singh, "At the Master's Feet," if you go to http://ccel.wheaton.edu/s/singh/feet/feet.htm With his lion's name and his lion's heart, Sundar Singh may have influenced the writer of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." As he was popularly perceived to be the most Christ-like man of his time, it seems quite possible that Sundar Singh was in the back of C.S. Lewis's mind when he described the Christ-figure, Aslan, in his children's stories about Narnia. (Aslan is the Turkish word for lion.) The interesting idea that Sadhu Sundar Singh, C.S. Lewis, and George MacDonald are linked together in significant ways is propounded further at http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/partridge/md_singh.htm ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Copyright 1998 by The Big Network. All rights reserved. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ If you would like to receive Saints & Sinners for FREE every Monday through Friday, OR look at the archives, visit: http://www.bignetwork.com/dp/ss
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