Glory and the Internment Camp

In 1924, Eric Liddell stood on the Olympic podium in Paris, a gold medal around his neck, the world cheering his name. The moment shimmered with glory — a public declaration that this man was set apart for something extraordinary. But Liddell did not linger in the spotlight. Within a year, he boarded a ship for China to serve as a missionary in rural Shandong Province.

What followed was no victory lap. Liddell spent nearly two decades in grueling conditions — teaching, preaching, cycling between remote villages on rutted roads, often separated from his family. When the Japanese invaded, he sent his pregnant wife and daughters to safety in Canada. He stayed behind. In 1943, he was interned at the Weihsien concentration camp, where he slept on a narrow cot in a crowded dormitory, survived on thin porridge, and gave away his own meager rations to weaker prisoners. He organized games for children, tutored teenagers in science, and quietly held worship services in the dust. He died there in February 1945, five months before liberation, of a brain tumor at age forty-three.

Mark tells us that immediately after the heavens opened and the Father's voice declared Jesus beloved, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. Not eventually. Immediately. The divine affirmation at the Jordan led straight to forty days among wild beasts and angels. Liddell understood what every disciple must learn — that the Father's blessing is not a shield from hardship but the very thing that equips us to walk straight into it.