GIVING UP WHAT WE CANNOT KEEP

       Maybe you remember the name, Eric Liddell. He was main character in the 1980s film, “Chariots of Fire.” The film mainly focused on his life as an Olympic athlete who gave up running in a medal race because he didn’t want to run on Sunday, his Sabbath. It’s still a great movie to watch.

        Few know, however, that Eric Liddell’s greatest work was as a missionary. Born to Scottish missionary parents in North China, Eric Liddell went back to China in 1925, where he worked as a teacher and a minister. In 1941, British nationals were urged to leave China because of the coming Japanese invasion. Liddell’s wife took their children to Canada, her home, but Liddell remained in China to work with his brother. In 1943, Eric Liddell was imprisoned by the Japanese, and he died in an internment camp in 1945. 

        In the 1990s a Christian journalist met an older woman who was a young girl in the same camp with Eric Liddell. She said they knew nothing of his fame as an athlete, only that Pastor Liddell was a kind man and a favorite teacher who brought hundreds, including herself, to faith in Jesus.

       Few people today will go to places of such danger to proclaim the Gospel. Jim Elliot, another Christian missionary, was killed by natives in South America in 1956, and he wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” 

        I Peter 3:15 tells us, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” May we be ready to share the hope we have in Jesus, even if it means giving up our life. As Jim Elliot said, it is...

“Giving up what we cannot keep to gain what we cannot lose.”

Rev. Bob Tasler, www.bobtasler.com