The Sunday He Refused to Run

In 1924, Scottish sprinter Eric Liddell arrived at the Paris Olympics as the favorite in the 100 meters. He had trained for years, and the entire British Empire expected gold. Then he learned the heats were scheduled for a Sunday.

Liddell wouldn't run. Not because he couldn't. Not because he was injured. Because he believed the Lord's Day belonged to God, not to him. The newspapers called him a traitor. Teammates urged him to compromise. Officials pressured him to reconsider. He stood firm.

What makes this story remarkable isn't just that he gave up a near-certain medal — it's what that medal represented. Years of training. National pride. Personal glory. The kind of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity most people would say God Himself had opened the door for. And Liddell let it close.

He later entered the 400 meters, a race he hadn't trained for, and won gold anyway. But that's not the point. The point is that when he said no to the 100, he had no guarantee of anything. He simply believed that obedience to God was worth more than Olympic gold.

Scripture tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. The hardest sacrifices aren't the things we hate giving up — they're the good things, the shining things, the things everyone else would tell us we earned. Liddell reminds us that what we place on the altar reveals what we truly worship.