A great 100-years-ago story to start the 2024 Olympic games
Posted By RichC on July 28, 2024
With the Summer Olympic games starting in Paris, France this July 2024, people around the world are glued to their televisions for 19 days as the top athletes from each country compete for Gold, Silver and Bronze medals … and as a chance to become Olympic champions.
Katelyn shared a story written by Pastor Mark Collins for The Gospel Coalition that highlighted Eric Liddell (some remember from the movie “Chariots Of Fire“) who competed in the Summer Olympics in 1924 … in Paris, France, 100 years ago.
There are a host of reasons to remember Liddell. As this summer marks the 100-year anniversary of the 1924 Paris Olympics, we look back on his triumphant victory there in the 400 meters.
That story begins in his rivalry with fellow British sprinter Harold Abrahams, the two entering the Olympics as favorites in both the 100 meters and 200 meters. However, Liddell dropped out of a heat for the 100 meters because it was run on Sunday (a race Abrahams later won).
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Perhaps an even greater reason to remember Liddell is his decision to lay aside his athletic career for a higher calling. After returning from Olympic triumph in Paris to overwhelming popular
adulation, he shocked everyone by announcing his intention to return to China as a missionary.
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Undoubtedly the greatest reason to remember Liddell is the way his life ended. With the Japanese invasion pressing further into China in 1944, his wife and their two daughters (and another on the way) were sent overseas to avoid danger. In hindsight, the London Missionary Society probably should have sent all the missionaries, but Liddell was convinced he should stay.
Liddell was able to minister for many months until finally he was rounded up with more than 2,000 others and taken to an internment camp in Weixian (the modern city of Weifang). Even there, his ministry flourished. Despite appalling conditions and death all around him, he poured himself into ministry with the young people of the camp.
Finishing the Race
The apostle Paul wrote about the end of his own life as the finishing of a race: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). In doing so, he exhorted Timothy—and all of us—to give everything we have until the finish line. The Christian life is a race not just to be started but to be run with perseverance all the way to the end. The way we finish speaks the most loudly of the object of our faith.
When you watch the Olympics this summer in Paris, think back not just on the Olympic glory Liddell won there 100 years earlier. Think about his love for China that led him to leave athletics behind for his calling there. Most of all, think about his love for Christ that carried him all the way to the end of his race.
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