The Olympian Who Ran to a Different Refuge

Eric Liddell won Olympic gold in Paris in 1924, his story later immortalized in Chariots of Fire. But the race that most revealed his faith wasn't run on any track.

By 1943, Liddell was imprisoned in the Weihsien internment camp in Japanese-occupied China, where he had been serving as a missionary. The compound was cramped and filthy — 1,500 people crammed behind barbed wire with dwindling rations. There were no medals here, no cheering crowds, no finish lines in sight.

Yet fellow prisoners remembered Liddell as the calmest man in the camp. Each morning he rose before dawn, lit a small lamp made from a peanut oil tin, and opened his worn Bible. He organized games for the children, taught science classes, and gave away his own Red Cross parcels to those in greater need. When others asked how he maintained such steady peace amid suffering, he pointed them to the character of God — El Shaddai, the Almighty, who proved sufficient even when everything else had been stripped away.

Liddell died in the camp in February 1945, just five months before liberation. But those who knew him said he had already found freedom — not by escaping the barbed wire, but by running daily into the refuge of God's presence.

Proverbs 18:10 tells us, "The name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe." Liddell could not outrun his captors. But he could run to the One whose name is an unshakeable stronghold — and there he was safe.