Sundar Singh: The Holy Man Who Followed Jesus

Sundar Singh grew up in a Sikh family in the north of India, a serious boy who searched and searched for God but could not find peace. He grew so angry and unhappy that one day he did a shocking thing — he burned a Bible. And yet, deep down, he was still desperate to know God, so much so that he decided that if God did not show Himself, life was not worth living.

Early one morning, in the middle of his despair, Sundar prayed one last time — and he saw Jesus, alive, full of love, speaking to him. From that moment Sundar belonged to Jesus, and nothing could shake him, not even when his own family turned him out and, he believed, tried to poison him for it.

Sundar decided to serve Jesus in a way his own people would understand. In India a sadhu is a holy man who gives up money and comfort and wanders from place to place seeking God. So Sundar became a sadhu for Jesus. He put on a simple saffron robe, owned almost nothing, and walked barefoot across the length of India, telling everyone he met about the Saviour he had seen.

He did not stop at India. Sundar climbed high into the freezing Himalayan mountains, the tallest in the world, and crossed into Tibet, a land closed and dangerous for a Christian, where he was beaten and once left for dead. His feet were often cut and bleeding from the rocky roads, and people began to call him “the apostle with the bleeding feet.”

In 1929, though he was ill and tired, Sundar set out once more for the mountains of Tibet, to carry the good news to people who had never heard it. He walked up into the high passes — and was never seen again. No one knows exactly what became of him. But all across India and the mountains, people remembered the barefoot holy man who had given up everything to follow Jesus, and would go anywhere, however hard, to tell of Him.