Eric Liddell's Final Lap

In 1924, Eric Liddell stood on the Olympic podium in Paris, a gold medal around his neck, all of Scotland cheering his name. He was the fastest man in the 400 meters, a national hero immortalized decades later in Chariots of Fire. Universities courted him. Endorsement opportunities beckoned. The world was handing him everything a young man could want.

He walked away from all of it.

Within a year, Liddell boarded a ship for northern China to serve as a missionary teacher in a rural district most Europeans could not find on a map. Friends thought he was wasting his gifts. Journalists called it a puzzling decision. But Liddell had done the same arithmetic Paul describes in Philippians — he weighed his credentials, his medals, his fame, and he counted them as loss compared to knowing Christ.

For twenty years he served in China, teaching children, tending the sick, translating scripture into local dialects. When the Japanese occupied the region during World War II, Liddell was interned at Weifang camp. He organized games for children, shared his meager rations, and kept pressing forward in faith. He died there in February 1945, five months before liberation.

His last words, found scribbled on a scrap of paper: "It's complete surrender."

That is what Paul means. Not grudging sacrifice, but the joyful, clear-eyed exchange of everything lesser for the one thing that matters — straining toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.