The Olympic Champion in the Prison Camp

Eric Liddell won Olympic gold in Paris in 1924, his story later immortalized in Chariots of Fire. But his greatest race was run behind barbed wire.

In 1943, the Japanese military interned Liddell in the Weihsien civilian camp in occupied China, where he had served as a missionary for nearly two decades. He could have been bitter. He could have spent his days counting the hours until liberation. Instead, Liddell did exactly what Jeremiah told the exiles to do — he invested himself fully in the life of that place.

He organized sports for restless teenagers. He taught science and math to children who had no school. He refereed disputes between exhausted prisoners. He carried coal for elderly internees too weak to fetch their own. Fellow prisoner Langdon Gilkey later wrote that Liddell was "the most outstanding personality" in the entire camp — not because he was famous, but because he poured himself into the welfare of a community he never chose.

Liddell died in that camp in February 1945, just months before liberation. He never saw freedom again. But he had lived Jeremiah's ancient counsel: "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf." God didn't promise the exiles a quick escape. He promised that faithfulness in the unwanted place would become its own kind of holy ground.