Barefoot on the Stones of Rome

On the evening of September 10, 1960, sixty-nine runners lined up for the Olympic marathon in Rome. Among them stood Abebe Bikila, a twenty-eight-year-old member of the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, virtually unknown to the sporting world. What the other competitors noticed immediately were his feet — bare against the cobblestones. His issued shoes had given him blisters, so he simply removed them and ran the way he had trained in the highlands of Ethiopia.

The seasoned European runners dismissed him. A barefoot soldier from East Africa? Surely he would fade.

He did not fade. As the course wound past the Axum Obelisk — the ancient Ethiopian monument that Mussolini's army had looted just twenty-three years earlier — Bikila surged ahead. He crossed the finish line near the Arch of Constantine in a world-record time of 2:15:16, the first sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal. He was so composed at the finish that he began doing stretching exercises while other runners collapsed around him.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27). The world measures readiness by equipment and pedigree. God measures it by faithfulness and surrender. Bikila carried nothing extra onto those Roman streets — and that was precisely enough. When we stop insisting on the world's armor and trust instead the strength God has already placed within us, we discover that His provision has never required our packaging.