1 Samuel 2:30 (NIV)
Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I
promised that members of your family would minister before me forever.’ But now
the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but
those who despise me will be disdained.
Ninety one years ago, a remarkable man did a remarkable
thing. Eric Liddell of Scotland refused to run a heat at the 1924 Olympic Games
in Paris because the race was scheduled on a Sunday, which his faith taught him
would violate the Sabbath.
As we know from the Academy Award-winning film,
"Chariots of Fire,'' Liddell managed to negotiate an unheard-of switch
from the 100-meter race he had been scheduled to run to the 400 meter, for
which he had not trained, later in the week. On July 11, 1924, Liddell won that
race and was showered with Olympic glory.
Instead of cashing in, Lidell turned his back on fame and
fortune and followed in his parents' footsteps, becoming a missionary in China,
where his most powerful contributions to God and to his fellow humans were
made.
In our day of focus groups and leadership weakened by
uncertainty of belief, Eric Liddell's example continues to stand out. A fanatic
might have demanded that others not run on Sunday, either, and organized a
group to enact legislation to conform society to his point of view. Not
Liddell. He just said he wouldn't run. Some newspapers denounced him as a
traitor to his country and king. How quickly they changed their tune when he
won a gold medal. Had he yielded to temptation and compromised his beliefs, we
might never have heard of him again.
The account of the race in the July 12, 1924, Times of
London conveys the excitement of that day in Paris: "Liddell had the
outside berth -- generally considered the worst place .... There was a perfect
start, and from the first jump-off the pace looked, and was, terrific. Two men
of the six fell .... But that made no difference, for there was never more than
one man in the race, and it was the pace he set that fairly ran them off their
legs. Sweeping round into the straight Liddell led by four or five yards, and
increased his lead by a couple of yards more in the run home. No one ever
looked like catching him .... "When the time was given out as 47 3-5 sec.,
and it was realized that, for the third time in two days, the world's `record'
had been lowered, the Stadium went insane ....'' When Liddell left Edinburgh
for China the following year, the number of people wanting to bid him farewell
was so large that 1,000 were unable to get in. Twenty years later he was taken
prisoner with other missionaries and Westerners and became one of 1,800 crowded
into a Japanese camp. His personal space had shrunk to 3 by 6 feet. Before his arrest,
Liddell managed to get his wife and two children to safety in Canada (Florence
Liddell was pregnant at the time with their third daughter, whom Eric would not
live to see). He died of a brain tumor on Feb. 21, 1945.
His biographer Sally Magnusson recalled that most people
who knew Liddell observed the consistency of his life. She tried to learn
whether he had "clay feet.'' In her book, "The Flying Scotsman,''
Magnusson thought she might have discovered something when she "happened on
a disillusioning eyewitness account of the behavior of some of the missionaries
in the Japanese internment camp where Liddell spent the last months of his
life.
`It is rare indeed when anyone has the good fortune to
meet a saint, but he comes as close to it as anyone I have ever known.' Of
course, he was talking about Eric Liddell.'' Magnusson adds that thousands of
people live similar lives in obscurity and the world does not know their names.
"And the first to remind us of that would be Eric Liddell -- who would be
full of embarrassment at the very idea of being the subject'' of a book or
film.
At the end of "Chariots of Fire,'' producer David
Puttnam put on the screen: "Eric Liddell, missionary, died in occupied
China at the end of World War II. All of Scotland mourned.''
Press accounts of the 1980 premiere of the film in
Edinburgh told of huge crowds. How fitting. The people of Scotland, who had
shared their native son with China, were welcoming him back and affirming the
note given to Liddell by his masseur before that 1924 race. It referred to the
Biblical passage 1 Samuel 2:30: "He who honors Me, I will honor.'' And so
He did. And so He still does 91 years later.
Dear Lord, help us honor You in everything we do so that
You will honor us. Help us not do things that bring honor to us. In Jesus’
Name, Amen.
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