Joy Behind the Wire

In 1943, Japanese soldiers marched Eric Liddell through the gates of the Weihsien internment camp in Shandong, China. The Scottish Olympic champion who had electrified the world by winning gold in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Games now found himself crowded into a compound with 1,800 prisoners, sleeping on a narrow cot, eating boiled grain.

Yet something remarkable happened behind that barbed wire. Liddell organized sports for restless children, taught science classes in a makeshift school, and carried coal for elderly missionaries too frail to manage the winter. Fellow prisoners would later recall that he was the most consistently cheerful person in the entire camp. One internee said simply, "He made everyone feel grubbier by comparison."

Liddell's body was failing — a brain tumor growing quietly, unseen. He died on February 21, 1945, just five months before liberation. But those who were with him testified that his hope never dimmed. It deepened.

Paul wrote to the Romans that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope — a hope that does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Eric Liddell lived that chain link by link. His peace with God, secured not by Olympic gold but by grace through faith, held fast when everything else was stripped away. The glory he pointed to was never his own.