Old Post

I was browsing through my multiply site and found some old posts that I thought are worth sharing. This one’s dated March 9, 2008.

 On an athlete, purpose and meaning

I attended a talk in CCF last Friday night where Francis Kong talked about issues in the workplace. The thing he said that got me thinking, though,was not a workplace issue. He said something about our life`s PURPOSE and MEANING.

Purpose, he said, is knowing what we have to do in life. Meaning, on theother hand, is when we throw our purpose away and do what he designed us to do.Well, at least, that`s how I interpreted what he said. For example, when you`re abusinessman, your purpose is to incur as huge an amount of money as possible.But it doesn`t stop there, meaning comes when you put these money to good uselike helping people get through life easier,etc.

As an example, Francis Kong also showed a clip about a champion athlete namedEric Liddell. I`ve attached an article I found in the web for a brief background on his life:

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SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, a remarkable man did aremarkable thing. Eric Liddell of Scotland refused to run a heatat the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris because the race wasscheduled on a Sunday, which his faith taught him wouldviolate the Sabbath.

As we know from the Academy Award-winning film,“Chariots of Fire,'’ Liddell managed to negotiate anunheard-of switch from the 100-meter race he had beenscheduled to run to the 400 meter, for which he had nottrained, later in the week. On July 11, 1924, Liddell won thatrace and was showered with Olympic glory.

Instead of cashing in, Lidell turned his back on fame andfortune and followed in his parents’ footsteps, becoming amissionary in China, where his most powerful contributions toGod and to his fellow humans were made.

In our day of focus groups and leadership weakened byuncertainty of belief, Eric Liddell’s example continues to standout. A fanatic might have demanded that others not run onSunday, either, and organized a group to enact legislation toconform society to his point of view. Not Liddell. He just saidhe wouldn’t run. Some newspapers denounced him as a traitorto his country and king. How quickly they changed their tunewhen he won a gold medal. Had he yielded to temptation andcompromised his beliefs, we might never have heard of himagain.

The account of the race in the July 12, 1924, Times of Londonconveys the excitement of that day in Paris: “Liddell had theoutside berth — generally considered the worst place …. Therewas a perfect start, and from the first jump-off the pacelooked, and was, terrific. Two men of the six fell …. But thatmade no difference, for there was never more than one man inthe race, and it was the pace he set that fairly ran them off theirlegs. Sweeping round into the straight Liddell led by four orfive yards, and increased his lead by a couple of yards more inthe run home. No one ever looked like catching him ….

“When the time was given out as 47 3-5 sec., and it wasrealized that, for the third time in two days, the world’s`record’ had been lowered, the Stadium went insane ….'’

When Liddell left Edinburgh for China the following year, thenumber of people wanting to bid him farewell was so largethat 1,000 were unable to get in. Twenty years later he wastaken prisoner with other missionaries and Westerners andbecame one of 1,800 crowded into a Japanese camp. Hispersonal space had shrunk to 3 by 6 feet. Before his arrest,Liddell managed to get his wife and two children to safety inCanada (Florence Liddell was pregnant at the time with theirthird daughter, whom Eric would not live to see). He died ofa brain tumor on Feb. 21, 1945.

      His biographer Sally Magnusson recalled that most people  who knew

Liddell observed the consistency of his life.  She tried to learnwhetherhe had “clay feet.'’ In her book, “The Flying Scotsman,'’ Magnussonthoughtshe might have discovered something when she “happened on adisillusioningeyewitness account of the behavior of some of the missionaries in theJapanese internment camp where Liddell spent the last months of hislife.I read of tempers lost and heavy moralizing, of exclusiveness andselfishness. The author scarcely had a good word for anyone….Then I turned the page and found this:`It is rare indeed when  anyone has the good fortune to meet a saint,buthe comes as close to it as anyone I have ever known.’ Of course, he wastalking about Eric Liddell.'’   Magnusson adds that thousands of peoplelive similar lives in obscurity and the world does not know their names.

“And the first to remind us of that would be Eric Liddell  — who wouldbe full of embarrassment at the very idea of being the subject'’ of abook or film.

At the end of “Chariots of Fire,'’ producer David Puttnam put on thescreen: “Eric Liddell, missionary, died in occupied China at the end ofWorld War II. All of Scotland mourned.'’

Press accounts of the 1980 premiere of the film in Edinburgh told ofhugecrowds. How fitting. The people of Scotland, who had shared their native

son with China, were welcoming him back and affirming the note given toLiddell by his masseur before that 1924 race. It referred to theBiblicalpassage 1 Samuel 2:30: “He who honors Me, I will honor.'’ And so He did.

And so He still does 75 years later.

Randy Walker

*****

In the clip, the voice-over was talking about another runner (I forgot his name) who has a completely different perspective as Liddell`s. He was running to reach the top. They were both gifted and on the peak of their careers. The former was running to win, Liddell ran to please God. This proved to be the one thing that set them apart from each other. On his last event, the other runner was nervous. He was scared to win because as he said, he was 10-seconds away from reaching the top. After that, he had nothing left to prove. Well, he won that event and everything went downhill after that as far as his life was concerned. He achieved his purpose, but never found its meaning.

Liddell on the other hand, refused to run on his scheduled event because it came in conflict with his convictions. He chose to honor God and God honored him back, he was granted permission to run on another event. While at the track a few moments before the gun sounded, someone handed Liddell a note, something about running for God and stuff. After that, he set himself to run and as the gun sounded, he just burst into a blitz and never looked back.

But what`s significant here is not the win, but the runner himself. It was easy to go against one`s convictions when the situation calls for it. But not for Liddell, he knew his purpose in life, and contrary to the other runner previously mentioned, he also knew the meaning of it. He said, “God made me fast, so I run and when I run, I feel the pleasure of God.”

It just struck me right there. I wasn’t quite able to think about anything else that night (up to yesterday actually). I had a lot of questions about my own life. Some have already been answered, though others are still open. I trust Him, though, that as I walk with Him, He’ll continue to reveal these things to me. What’s in this life? How can I achieve its meaning?

Well, these may be 2 questions you ask yourself as well. One thing’s for sure, only the Author of it knows.