Barefoot Gold

In the spring of 1944, behind the concrete walls of the Weihsien internment camp in Weifang, China, a gaunt Scottish missionary noticed a barefoot Chinese boy. The missionary was Eric Liddell, the man who had stunned the world twenty years earlier by winning Olympic gold in the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Games. His explosive stride had made him the fastest man in Britain.

Now, in this Japanese-run compound where nearly 1,800 Allied civilians scraped by on thin rations, Liddell had almost nothing left to give. Almost. He unlaced his running shoes and placed them on the boy's feet. No cameras captured the moment. No medal ceremony followed. The man whose legs had carried him to Olympic immortality simply knelt in the dust of a prison yard to shoe a child the world would never know.

Jesus said, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap" (Luke 6:38). Liddell died in that camp on February 21, 1945, of a brain tumor, just months after giving those shoes away. He owned nothing by the world's measure. But by heaven's measure, his cup was running over.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself so little that you kneel to place what you treasure most on someone else's feet.