Scottish sporting legends includes the story of Olympians Eric Liddell and Allan Wells. And we have autobiographies of modern-day Olympians Sir Chris Hoy (he’ll have to update his after the Games), and Kelly Smith who is generally considered the greatest women’s footballer that Great Britain has ever produced; she is a key player in Team GB’s squad for the women’s football tournament.

• Chris Hoy: the autobiography
• Kelly Smith – Footballer: my story

Find these and other sports related titles on our library catalogue.

In preparing to teach the high school class this morning at church, I was going through my normal routine.  Basically, I was thinking a lot and preparing very little, counting on my vast wisdom to pull me through.   As usually happens, God once again showed me how woefully lacking I am in that category! 

I had the basic lesson in my head, which is based around helping our teens make their faith their own and using it to shine God’s Love to others.  I always struggle knowing how to best reach these amazing kids.  I had planned to talk about Paul’s amazing conversion story and how it changed him in every way.  I was going to end with Philippians 2:14,15 where Paul tells the Philippians to “shine as stars in the universe” because of what God has done for them. I was trying to think of a modern example of this, especially with the Olympics being contested right now.  Once again, my lovely and wise wife came to my rescue and suggest Eric Liddell. Thanks for that honey!

If you are unfamiliar with the name, think of the movie, “Chariots of Fire” form 1981…or ask someone over 40 to tell you about it.   If you need a recent reminder, this was the scene that “Mr. Bean” spoofed during the opening ceremonies last week.  Mr. Liddell was a Scottish missionary who competed in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.  He was known as the “Flying Scotsman” after the famed locomotive.  He is a man that every Christian, especially Christian athletes, should study.  He was the pride of Scotland because of his speed in the 100 and 200 yard dash.  More importantly, he was a man who put God first in his life.  After finding out that the prelims of his primary race,  the 100, were being run on Sunday, Mr. Liddell chose to stand on his belief that he should not run on the Sabbath.  He refused to betray his convictions and was eliminated from what would have been a likely gold medal.  He then went on to run the 200 and win the bronze medal.  But his biggest glory was yet to come.  He ran the 400 and won!  In the movie, and according to many reports, Liddell was handed a note by an American on the way to the starting blocks with the words of I Samuel 2:30 written on it.  “Those who honor me, I will honor. “

What a great lesson!  If we honor God with our life, He will honor us.  That is what I have been telling teens for years, but Eric Liddell lived it so beautifully.  When we put God first in whatever we do, He will shine in our lives.  We will “shine like stars” to this world that needs God so badly.  It brings a new light to the Colossians 3:17.  “Whatever you do whether in word or deed, do it ALL in the name of the Lord Jesus”.  Thank you Mr. Liddell for a great example.

Happy running,

Rundad

Art: Lego-Brücke

“[Pictured] here [is the result of a] four week transformation [of] a 250 square meter [area of a] bridge with … ​​Lego bricks.”

Bible translation: C.S. Lewis on the Nature of Scripture

“The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.”

Chik-Fil-A, LGBT & the culture wars: * Christian Resources for Thinking About Homosexuality; * What Exactly Did Dan Cathy Say to Land Chic-fil-a in Hot Water?; * Five Reasons the Church Failed Yesterday; * Learning to Speak: Chick-fil-A & our Inability to Dialogue; * Do Corporations Have Souls?

* “My basic question is ‘What attitude should Christians adopt as we consider our interaction with the LGBT community?’”

* “‘We don’t claim to be a Christian business,’ Cathy told the Biblical Recorder in a recent visit to North Carolina. He attended a business leadership conference many years ago where he heard Christian businessman Fred Roach say, ‘There is no such thing as a Christian business.’ ‘That got my attention,’ Cathy said. Roach went on to say, ‘Christ never died for a corporation. He died for you and me.’ ‘In that spirit … [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are,’ Cathy added.”

* “Yesterday’s campaign, while I don’t think it should be considered or called ‘hate,’ neither can it be called love. … People felt hate and we ignored that. … By rallying behind CFA, Christians put an issue above people. … Once again, the mass actions of Christians built another wall of distrust between the Church and the GLBTQ communities. … Yesterday’s hoopla surrounding CFA did nothing to prove that Christians don’t hate gay people.”

* “The issue is not homosexuality. We do the same with Muslims and Hindus, with Atheists and Agnostics. We do it with Christians that think differently regarding heaven and hell, baptism or remarriage, or those who get a little too charismatic when their favorite worship song is played. We do it with anyone who we view as ‘the Other.’ The real issue is us. We struggle to ‘put skin’ on the words and message of Christ with anyone who thinks differently than us. Too often, we demand conformity prior to connection.”

* “In light of the Chick-Fil-A ‘Appreciation Day’ I’m wondering, ‘When did corporations become moral guardians for our society?’”

Communication, ministry & relationships: Conversations Skills that Transform by Kevin A. Miller

“… they have scores of digital ‘friends,’ but what’s missing is analog—a slow, listening, face-to-face presence.”

Death & the hereafter: Immediately after Death, What Happens?

“Following a sermon one day a person waited around until everyone had left and he asked me this: ‘My father was a Christian; he died last week; we buried him Monday. Where is he now?’ And pastor after pastor has told me this is a very common — monthly — question they get from the grieving. Matthew Levering … explores how three representative scholars — N.T. Wright, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Aquinas — explain the so-called intermediate state.”

Drugs: Houston Area ‘Major Player’ in Synthetic Drug Market

“… the Houston area is the No. 1 spot in Texas when it comes to people getting poisoned by synthetic compounds designed to mimic the effects of marijuana and methamphetamines.”

Illegal alines & immigration: Immigration: Justice, Mercy, and the Great Commission by J. Lance Conklin

“…  are those entering the U.S. illegally breaking into a house to steal a T.V., or are they stealing a loaf of bread to feed their family?”

Introverts: Eight Things to Help You Understand Introverts by Thom Rainer

“I am an introvert. … I hope these eight statements will help you understand us a little bit better.”

Knife-sharpening: * Testing a Knife’s Sharpness;  * Stoning Your Knife;  * Honing Your Knife

Three brief videos by Bob Kramer, master bladesmith.

Olympics: Eric Liddell – A True Champion

“Eric Liddell is best known as ‘the man from Chariots of Fire’ (cue slow running) but there was much more to him than that!”

Parenting & texting: Control Your Kids’ Texting

“My kids are glued to their smartphones. … Is there a way I can turn off texting on their phones during a certain time?”

Politics & faith: A Third Party Candidate by Scott Elliott

“… many Christians have fallen into [a] … political trap. They ‘treat their religion as a kind of politics and their politics as a kind of religion.’ Politics becomes an idol, and hope rises or falls based on the outcome of the coming election. Christians on both sides of the aisle are guilty of bowing to an elephant or a donkey, thinking they have the answers to their problems. The truth is neither the Republicans nor the Democrats possess the solutions to that which plagues humanity, but there is a third option.”

Preaching: * Preaching: Raiding or Reading?; * It’s Not About You – Or Is It?

* “Bible Raiding. This sort goes to the Bible to find support for an already-decided-upon idea, to get answers from the Bible on the basis of a surface reading of the Bible … and lets what the preacher wants to say and what the preacher believes establish what is to be preached. … Bible Reading. This sort goes to the Bible to see what it says and what it says shapes what the preacher preaches and teaches. …”

* “Whether we like it or not, therefore, it is ‘about us’ – which raises all the more intensely the question of how we can also be certain that it is not only and primarily about us, but ultimately about the God we worship in and through Jesus Christ.”

Self-righteousness: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

“The really insidious part about this condition is that the more I go on as a Christian: the more I grow in knowledge, the more I become integrated into the Christian community, the more my lifestyle conforms to the expectations of my particular Christian group, the more separated I get from “the world” and its ways, the more I learn to act, speak, dress, and think like a Christian, the more my capacity for self-righteousness increases.”

Taxes & demographics: Study: Romney Tax Plan Would Shift Burden Toward Poor

“Mitt Romney’s tax plan would provide large tax cuts to the very wealthy, while increasing the tax burden on the lower and middle classes, according to a study … produced by researchers at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center …”

United States: Is America a Secular Nation? by Ben Witherington

“It would be nearer the truth to say that America is a narcissistic ‘who cares’ society when it comes to politics than to say it is a secular society.”

Eric Liddell

Even Sepia Saturday has caught Olympic Fever, just like me. As I ponder the prompt above, I first thought of Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame. Liddell was a devout Christian and Olympic runner. The Oscar winning movie dramatizes the story of Liddell, who decided not to run in two races in the 1924 Paris Olympics because they would be held on Sunday, the Sabbath. The movie did take some liberties with the facts, which you can read about here. Still it’s a good movie well worth watching if memory serves.

Liddell Winning the Gold Medal

Chariots of Fire Finale

Anyway, a tip: don’t ask the ushers at Chariots of Fire if Mr Bean is appearing. At the first post-opening ceremony performance Phil checked but they had apparently been asked several times already.

Failing to obtain tickets for any Olympic events, this seemed the nearest alternative to try and get into the spirit of the games and Phil was intrigued: he’d been having a drink outside a hostelry near the Gielgud Theatre a few days earlier when a complete stranger came up and congratulated him on his performance in COF. Who could she mean? Most of the cast weren’t even born when that strangely over-awarded 1981 film came out which left a few of the more senior cast members. So Nicholas Grace or Simon Williams perhaps? Bizarre.

This West End transfer from the Hampstead Theatre was announced before it even opened there; so in some ways swifter than Mark Cavendish Lizzie Armitstead Wiggo.

The running track up in NW3 apparently ahem, ran all all the way round the auditorium there. The Gielgud presents bigger problems so only ahem, runs around the first few rows of the stalls and presumably this isn’t visible to the higher reaches of the audience. But if you sit on the stage (as we did) you’ll catch the breeze of the actors (and a whiff of wardrobe care) as they thud past at speed. Immersive enough for us, but even without roller skates it does evoke memories of Starlight Express.

If you’re too young to be familiar with the story it tells of two prototypes for Team GB competing in the 1924 Paris Olympics: Jewish Harold Abrahams (James McArdle) battling the prejudices of the time and Eric Liddell (Jack Lowden) who is such a devout Christian he won’t compete on Sundays.

Not only are the actors required to act, but sing, play musical instruments and run. And run pretty fast too given the confines of the space allotted. And on slopes. And sometimes in a figure of eight without bumping into each other or the furniture. One of them is called upon to jump a hurdle without knocking over the full champagne glasses sitting upon it. This he does successfully, several times. Better put champagne flutes on either side of Zara’s jumping poles if she makes it Rio we say. If you sit on the stage you’re not allowed to take your interval snifter back in with you. Just as well. The Whingers might have been tempted to place them on the hurdle too, just to see exactly how coordinated the actor really is.

Director Edward Hall makes extraordinary calls on his cast; one hopes he also makes them do his washing-up and ironing whilst performing on the uneven bars. It’s quite likely they’d handle it with aplomb.

The tale is told in a series of ever-changing scenes using a double revolve (design Miriam Buether) with the occasional clever directorial flourish: Sam Mussabini’s (Nicholas Woodeson) training session with Liddell becomes an Eadweard Muybridge-styled tableau most effectively and as you take your seats for Act 2 Simon Slater becomes a genial warm-up man interacting with the audience most amusingly.

And all this in an adaptation from Mike Bartlett, the man who brought us Love, Love, Love, Cock (ok, that’s it with the Cock gags – ed) and more.

Having heard that audiences get quite emotional at the end we came prepared. The opening of the play is stirringly spine-tingling in itself, but as it chugged to its close Phil was feeling nothing. Then suddenly it happened. Phil was shaken that he was so stirred even before Vangelis’ over-familiar strains kicked in. Expect to deposit something moist into a tissue. Phil did.

Running time, ahem: 2hrs 30 minutes.

Rating

“Heart Mind & Soul” is a special edition of the Gospel of Mark and is the ideal tool for churches to give away to anyone attending a sports ministry evangelistic event. It includes profiles of Christian sports men and women likely to be competing in the 2012 Olympics, such as Allyson Felix (track 400m), Debbie Flood (rowing quads) and Maya Moore (basketball). Only 99p.

“Beyond the Gold” by Bryan Mason is “what every church needs to know about sports ministry”. This book provides sound biblical basis for sports ministry as well as information and ideas for those wanting to make a sporty fresh expression of church in their communities. £7.99

“Sports Fun for Messy Churches” is another from Lucy Moore’s best-selling Messy Church series and it provides a “A wealth of simple inter-active and family-friendly sports ideas”. £5.99

And for those arm chair Olympians amongst you, who might want a good book to tempt you away from the TV, there are two biographies of Eric Liddell in stock, “Complete Surrender” by Julian Wilson at £7.99, and “Pure Gold” by David McCasland for £9.99.

So limber up, stretch out and come down and see us!

Call in at the shop or visit our web-site at www.christianresourcesleicester.com

YOUR DIOCESE – YOUR BOOKSHOP – Encouraging faith, equipping Christians.
Christian Resources Leicester
St Martins House.
7 Peacock Lane, Leicester LE1 5PZ
enquiries@christianresourcesleicester.com

Opening hours are 9.00am to 5pm Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 4.30pm Saturdays

If the above quote fails to move a Larger part of you, I have some instructions:
- Hold two fingers to the side of your throat, and verify you actually have a pulse.

Inspiration throttled me as I watched the Olympics opening ceremonies last night. The whole expression was brilliantly portrayed, gave me shivers in many places, but I was captivated anew, as I’ve been in the past, by the remembrance of Scottish Olympian, Eric Liddell, whom I feel is simultaneously one of the most inspirational and inspired men in history.
Dear readers, fill in your own answer to this phrase -
“When I ________, I feel God’s pleasure.”
One rule: you can’t say “when I write…”. I think we can assume this of 99% of WordPress users.

That said, here is mine for today -
“When I teach my son something new, I feel His pleasure.”

Today, I taught my youngest to ride his bicycle without training wheels. I am under a euphoria to which few experiences compare…

“Run in God’s name and let the world stand back in wonder”

If I’m going to do this, I’d best do it right. And really, there is no other way I could have started my Olympic Film Festival to celebrate the London games than by watching the story of two British gold-medalists. It had to be the 1982 Academy Award winner for Best Picture. It had to be the movie with the most perfect opening titles I’ve ever seen. It had to be Chariots of Fire.

One might think it would be hard to have low expectations going in to a movie that won four Oscars, including Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay, and that was nominated for three more, including best Supporting Actor and Best Director. But yet, somehow I was. Once, many years ago I’d sat down and tried to watch Chariots of Fire, and I’d given up in boredom within the first ten minutes. Clearly I was a fool with no attention span back then because this is a FANTASTIC movie.  Apparently Oscar voters, (even in the early eighties,) know more about movies than I did as a teenager. Go figure.

I’ve always loved Vangelis’ score, particularly the opening theme. I’m pretty sure that when I was a little kid my parents had a copy of the soundtrack album on vinyl and would play it from time to time. This brings up vague memories of running around in the living room back when the couch was still taller than me…. anyhow back to the movie. The opening scene is just about perfect. The, at this point, anonymous runners running barefoot along the beach in their national team uniforms accompanied by this magnificent score is an astonishingly beautiful way to begin a film, but the true masterstroke is that the same sequence is also used to close the film. This might seem redundant, but on second-viewing having met these characters, knowing who they are what drives them makes for an entirely different experience.

Ian Charleson and Ben Cross are fantastic as Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. This may largely come from the fact that they are performing fantastically written material about two tremendously driven and dedicated men. Rivals under the same flag; each with deep-rooted and unrelenting desire to be the absolute best. And Ian Holm is highly entertaining as Sam Mussabini the [gasp] professional track coach. The scene where he learns the result of Abrahams’ 100 Meter final, and the means by which he learns it is one that will stay with me for a long time.

I’m going to wrap up now because I feel like if I continue I’ll just get repetitive calling everything fantastic. The bottom line is that Chariots of Fire is a truly, truly outstanding movie.  If you’ve already seen the film I’m sure you know where I’m coming from. If you haven’t. You should. Soon. Heck, Amazon has it available for streaming for less than $3.

[Chariots of Fire (1981) - Directed by  Hugh Hudson - Rated PG]

This week in the E100 God speaks to this as we relive Holy Week in our readings; in the midst of it we read that Jesus essentially asked the same questions.  He asked, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (He was quoting Psalm 22).   But Jesus knew that He had to endure that feeling of separation, along with suffering, humiliation and death in order that we might be not only forgiven, but also offered God’s strength for times when we face those questions and situations.

God knows what we’re going through.  God is here.  God walks with us in the midst of our need.

I shared a story this month in the Messenger, which points to this.  I wrote about Derek Redmond, a British Olympian, who competed in the 1992 Barcelona Games.  Watch to see what the love of the father can do to help us in our time of need.

2:28 minute clip Derek Redmond 1992 Barcelona, 400 metres

There was another British (well, more importantly Scottish!) Olympian who ran the 400 metres almost 70 years before Redmond.  He was a man who knew the strength both of his earthly and heavenly Father, which enabled him to run not only the race on the track but in life.

20 second clip of Eric Liddell 1924 Paris, 400 metres (click on link)

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/scottish-olympic-moments-eric-liddell-1924-1-2429512

How will you run–and with whom will you run–this week?

In the corner of a quiet Chinese courtyard, 5,000 miles from Scotland, stands a memorial in Isle of Mull granite. The stone commemorates Eric Liddell – one of Scotland’s greatest Olympians – who is buried nearby. The stone was gifted by Edinburgh University after a Scottish engineer, Charles Walker, rediscovered his grave in the Chinese city of Weifang.

Eric Liddell won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris

Liddell, the son of Christian missionaries, had been born in China in 1902 and lived there until he was five when he returned to Britain to be educated. While he was at Edinburgh University, Liddell excelled at athletics and also played rugby for the Scottish national team – as well as being a noted evangelist preacher.

At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he famously refused to run on a Sunday, ruling him out of the 100 metres race to which he was best suited. Instead, he took part in the 400 metres race and, against the odds, still won a gold medal.

Soon after his Olympic triumph, Liddell finished his studies and returned to China to become a missionary. As well as religious duties, he worked as a science and sports teacher at the Anglo/Chinese College in Tianjin.

After the Japanese invasion in 1937, Liddell carried on his missionary work even when it became dangerous to do so. Liddell’s wife and children left China for Canada in 1941 but he stayed to help in any way he could.

In 1943 he was interned at Weifang and he died of a brain tumour just months before the end of World War II, at the age of 43.

Liddell’s achievements are taught at the school on the site of the prison camp

The prisoner-of-war camp which held about 2,000 Westerners is now a place of learning for 2,000 Chinese teenagers. Every new pupil at the school is taught about the camp and Eric Liddell’s achievements on and off the track

“This part of history is a great treasure for our school,” said head teacher, Zhao Guixia.

“We can see the great value of humanity, especially in Eric Liddell’s stories.”

In the camp, Liddell was affectionately known as “Uncle Eric” because he spent most of his time teaching children, organising sports and helping others.

via BBC News – Chariots of Fire’s Eric Liddell is Chinese ‘hero’.

Related articles

• Olympic hero Eric Liddell’s secret: roast beef (scotsman.com)
• A Race Well Run: Olympian Eric Liddell (nancycreative.com)
• Eric Liddell exhibition for champion who wouldn’t run on Sundays (guardian.co.uk)
• Scottish News: Chariots of Fire runner Eric Liddell’s daughter hits out at modern ‘greed’ (dailyrecord.co.uk)
• New exhibition on Eric Liddell: Olympic athlete and missionary (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
• Eric Liddell (jesusnameaboveall.wordpress.com)
• Eric Liddell’s Olympic spirit to live on at university (scotsman.com)
• Chariots of Fire: history gets the runaround (guardian.co.uk)

The film is based on the two British runners, Eric Liddell and Ben Abrahams and their training, attitudes and eventually their participation in the Paris Olympics 1924.  Most people who have heard of Eric Liddell or who have seen the film know that he was a committed Christian who refused to race on Sundays.  As the Olympic heat for his race – the 100 metres – was scheduled for a Sunday he refused to run, and nothing and no-one could persuade him otherwise . Instead he ran on a weekday in another event, the 400 meters,  a distance for which he had not trained. No-one thought he had a chance. To everyone’s amazement he won the Gold Medal and set a new world record of 47.6 seconds, a record which stood for 12 years.  He then ran  the 200 meters and won the Bronze medal.

The Paris Olympics  were a dramatic episode in his life, however the life he lived after his Olympic glory was even more amazing and even more inspiring.

Eric Liddell was born in China in the city of Tientsin (now Tianjing) in 1902. He was the younger of two sons born to Rev. and Mrs. James Dunlop Liddell   who were  Scottish missionaries working in China. He learnt to speak Mandarin when just an infant.

He and  his older brother were sent to boarding school in Britain and then they went on to  Edinburgh  University. A natural athlete, Liddell played Rugby Union at international level and was capped 7 times for Scotland in 1922 and 1923 playing in the Five Nations Championship.

Besides playing rugger, Liddell had started running competitively at school and continued whilst at university. Then came the famous situation when having gained a place in the British Olympic team he discovered the timing of his Olympic heat and refused to run as it was the Sabbath, thus losing his place in the 100 metres for which he was favourite – instead he ran the 400 metres and the 200 metres, and the rest is history.

He once said: ‘I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.’

As soon as he graduated from university he went back to China, to Tientsin where he had grown up. He was appointed as a teacher at  the Anglo-Chinese School which had predominantly Chinese pupils . He was determined to introduce the Olympian ideals into the lives of young Chinese. He continued to run competitively from time to time and when members of the 1928 French and Japanese Olympic teams attended the South Manchurian Railway celebrations in China in 1928 he won both the 200 and 400 metre races.

Liddell married Florence Mackenzie who was the daughter of  Canadian missionaries, and they had three daughters. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria ( the northern part of China) and started moving south the situation became dangerous and in  1941 he persuaded his wife to take their daughters and go back to Canada. It must have been a difficult decision for both of them, and they never met again.  He resigned his teaching post and went to join his older brother Robert who was a doctor working  in Shaochang, Northern China; there Liddell worked as a missionary.

It was hard in every sense of the word. On one occasion he went out on a bicycle to find and bring back an injured Chinese soldier. When he found the soldier he discovered nearby another, even more badly injured, man. The Japanese had attempted to execute the man but miraculously he had survived.  What was Liddell to do?  what he did was to use what he had and what he could find locally, and he constructed a crude cart on which he pushed the two injured men for 32 kms until they reached a Chinese Army medical center.

The Japanese advance was relentless and eventually in 1943 their troops reached Tientsin. Local citizens, including Liddell, were interned in Weifang camp. Whilst there, Liddell taught maths and physics to the younger inmates. He also kept morale high by organising and playing sports with the other prisoners, particularly the young ones.  Eventually the Japanese authorities offered Churchill a list of names of those who would be released on humanitarian grounds. Eric, now 41 yrs old, was on the list. When he was told of this he immediately had his own name removed and the name of pregnant woman prisoner who had  a young child put in his place.

On February 21st 1945, whilst still in the camp, he died of a brain tumour aged 43, five months before the end of the war with Japan.  When the war was over the Chinese had his remains removed from the camp and he was buried, with honours, in the Mausoleum of Martyrs at Shijiazhuang,  a special site  (approx 150 kms south of Beijing) which is dedicated to non-Chinese who gave their lives for the creation of modern China.

An awe-inspiring individual, but so modest, so self-effacing. Born in China he died in China.  A true Christian, he lived his life by his beliefs – how many of us can say we are doing the same?

I hate to think what he would make of the London Olympics 2012 with its corporate sponsors, fast food franchises,  vast amounts of money being spent on everything from security to landscaping, and special traffic lanes for the Olympic ‘officials’ who don’t want to be associated with us lesser mortals.

Citius, Altius, Fortius is the Olympic motto. Maybe it is time for the Olympics to get back to being what it was originally, a contest of the Fastest, Highest, Strongest in the world, and nothing else.

Nor is there any question today about whether Christian or Jewish competitors will compete on their Sabbaths during the London Games. They will. With billions of dollars in play and national prestige on the line, what has become the greatest show on earth goes on no matter the religious beliefs of the participants.

It was not always thus. During the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, Scottish sprinter and pre-race favourite Eric Liddell passed up his chance to take part in the 100 metres because one heat fell on a Sunday. Liddell’s faith and idealism and the purity of sport were central themes of Chariots of Fire, a celebrated film that won four Academy Awards in 1981, including Best Picture.

The movie recounted Liddell’s struggles and those of Harold Abrahams, a Jew from Bedford — and a formidable sprinter in his own right — who overcame anti-Semitism and a strong American challenge to win the 100 metres before becoming an influential commentator and advocate for athletics and the Olympic movement.

Liddell, who also was a rugby international, switched to the 400 metres in France after resisting intense pressure to participate in the 100-metre dash. Although not particularly suited for the longer distance, he set a world-record time in winning the gold medal.

“The Flying Scotsman” eventually married a Canadian who shared his devotion to God and joined him in China as a missionary. After years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp there, Liddell died five months before the end of the war.

Theatre audiences at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End have been reminded of the struggles and heroics of the saintlike Liddell and the prejudice-fighting Abrahams in a brilliant staging of a new play based on the movie that has been timed to coincide with the London Games. The musical, like the movie, starts and ends with Greek composer Vangelis’s famous triumphal score. It includes nine cleverly choreographed races between Liddell and Abrahams, and between them and their American rivals, the contestants hurtling at great speed around a small stage. The physicality and the theatricality of the performances of rising stars Jack Lowden, as Liddell, and another Scot, James McArdle, are — there is no other word for it — breathtaking.

The profound questions posed by Chariots of Fire are a sobering counterpoint to the orgy of excess that the Olympics Games have become in recent years.

While the Brits have struggled to produce outstanding athletes for a very long time, they do produce heaps of world-class theatre. Not to be outdone by their sportsmen and sportswomen, the country’s cultural community has produced a burst of new works and exhibitions that elaborate on Olympic dramas of the past and present.

Another play, 1936, recalls Hitler’s notorious Berlin Games. It was there, among the Nazi pennants and goose-stepping troops, that Jesse Owens, the black American athlete, stole the show from the Fuehrer by winning four gold medals, thereby making a nonsense of the dictator’s belief in the alleged physical superiority of Aryans.

As well as pointedly not congratulating Owens on his triumphs, Hitler also excluded all Jewish athletes from competing for Germany. In so doing, he probably denied world-record setting shot putter and discuss thrower Lilli Henoch of two gold medals. Henoch was murdered six years later in Latvia by the Nazi SS.

However, not all of Britain’s many Olympic-themed shows turn on moral questions.

Twenty Twelve is a quasi-documentary spoof of the London Games that began running on the BBC in April. The series stars Hugh Bonneville — better known as the fictional earl presiding over Downton Abbey — as Ian Fletcher, the head of the Olympic Deliverance Committee. This fictional group is charged with staging the Games.

Last week’s episode mocked political correctness, as the Games’ managers debated how to honour Inclusivity Day on the same day that the organizers were marking Diversity Day. The episode also poked fun at London’s attention-hogging mayor, Boris Johnson, the reality that tens of thousands of tickets for women’s soccer remain unsold and the competition over who will snare one of the few post-Olympic legacy jobs. A previous episode seemed to be art imitating life, as a bus driver got lost while transporting senior Olympic officials. This actually happened last week when a driver got lost for four hours while escorting some American athletes from Heathrow Airport to the Olympic Village.

Other episodes have poked fun at Olympic logos, traffic problems, security and a fictional potential Algerian boycott arising from the fact that the Olympic Diversity Committee’s Shared Belief Centre does not face Mecca.

Twenty Twelve concludes two days before the real Games begin on Friday. 1936 wraps up on August 5. Chariot of Fire can be seen until November.

fisherrmatthew(at)hotmail.com

“The Flying Scotsman”

Despite telling myself I wouldn’t, I’m becoming slightly infected with Olympic excitement. After the sensational sporting spectacle that was Chelsea winning the Champions’ League, I thought that any other sporting event for the rest of my life would have a permanent air of anticlimax. Still, it’s all getting to me. Part of that may be to do with the time I’ve spent recently thinking about the life of Eric Liddell.

You may not have a clue who Eric Liddell was, so here’s a quick lowdown – at the 1924 Paris Olympics, Eric Liddell won gold for Britain in the 400m finals, setting a world record at 47.6 seconds. This cemented his well earned nickname “The Flying Scotsman” (which was also partly down to the fact that he ran like Phoebe in that one episode of Friends). But the thing that makes Eric Liddell stand out in Olympic history is that the 400 metres wasn’t even his primary race. He was a 100m sprinter. 

Eric Liddell was a Christian, and it was his conviction that he should not partake in competitive sports on a Sunday. This meant that he removed himself from the 100m, 4 x 100m and 4 x 400m races, and was entered instead into the 400m.

Whilst Britain was still predominantly a Christian nation in 1924, Eric attracted plenty of criticism for opting not to represent his country on Sundays. Instead, Eric spent Sundays at church, hearing the Bible preached, worshipping God and enjoying the company of other Christians, as he believed that the Lord’s day was a wonderful blessing God bestowed on his people.

Today, we would think Eric was even crazier. Can you imagine Usain Bolt refusing to run on Sundays? Some would be outraged. Others would call him deluded, even selfish.

Well, it gets crazier.

Eric Liddell received an Olympic gold medal in July 1924. In July 1925, he began his journey to China to begin what would become twenty years of missionary work.

He may not end up on the far side of the world, but his Champion’s League semi-final penalty nearly did…

Now imagine THAT. A world famous athlete, a national hero, one of the highest profile sportsmen in the land – and he leaves. At the top of his game!  He heads to the far side of the world to tell people about Jesus. Picture that in this day and age. Imagine Lionel Messi announcing to the world that he was leaving Barcelona in order to go to some barren backwater of a third world country because he believed God had called him to do so, and that he would never play football competitively again.

What would people say about him? Think for yourself – what would you say about him?

Why give up respect, glory, success? Why go against the urging of everyone around you? It does seem like TOTAL foolishness. A waste even.

The same Bible which compelled Eric Liddell in his Christian convictions had this to say about foolishness:

“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong” – 1 Corinthians 1:27

To the world, Eric Liddell’s decisions – honouring the Sabbath and trading Olympic glory for missionary hardship – was a catastrophic folly. And he knew that! He knew exactly what the world would think. But Eric Liddell believed that God, the Creator of the Universe, was in control of those seemingly foolish things and that, actually, they were full of wisdom. The same passage of the Bible referred to above also says “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men“ (1 Corinthians 1:25).

Still, did Eric Liddell give up his athletic career and home comforts based purely on the words of some dusty old book written nearly 2000 years before he was born? What is that to go on? I mean, I don’t think that words of some beardy zealot in the ancient Near East would compel me to a great deal. Is that all that inspired Eric Liddell’s decisions?

It was more than just words that drove him. Indeed, it is more than just words that drive all Christians. Eric Liddell didn’t just go all the way to China to share some ideas or a philosophy. He didn’t even go primarily to share kindness and charity. He went to share a person - Jesus Christ.

As a Christian, Eric believed that Jesus Christ had given everything for him. Eric set aside athletic glory for Jesus, but Jesus set aside the glory of heaven for Eric (Philippians 2:6). Eric gave his life for Jesus by going to China, but Jesus gave his life for Eric by dying to take the punishment for his sins on a cross, so that Eric could have a right relationship with God and live with him for all eternity (2 Corinthians 5:21). Eric hoped to win people for Jesus, but Jesus had already won a victory over sin and death for Eric (2 Corinthians 2:14).

Eric Liddell was willing to give up all he had for Jesus, because Jesus gave up all he had for Eric Liddell. He looked a total fool. But Jesus Christ, outwardly, looked like the greatest fool in all of human history. He died naked and alone, humiliated and rejected, claiming to be God and the only way to Heaven. And Eric knew that Christ had done all that for him.

Were Eric around today, he would urge you to be compelled by this same message. Christ died for you also. Jesus willingly was held in contempt and scorn for you. He was hung upon a cross for you. He set aside the glory of heaven for you.

In our lives, we rebel against God and put ourselves on the thrones of our existence, believing we know better than the all powerful Creator of time and space. For Eric, the temptation was to exchange God for fame and glory. For us, it is a host of other things – financial security, sexual fulfilment, romance, success, the approval of our friends. These are good things, but they are no replacement for the maker of Heaven and Earth. If we put all of our identity in these things, they will leave us hollow and heartbroken.

Replacing God for those things is something we deserve punishment for. If we pass up the glory of God, then God will give us what we choose and cut us off from his goodness forever. But he sent his Son Jesus to die in our place so that we can come back to him. Christ gave ALL that he had to bring you back to God.

Eric Liddell ended up dying of a brain haemorrhage in a Japanese internment camp in China in 1945 – thousands of miles from his homeland, his family and his gold medal. He had given up a life in which he lived for the approval of men, and exchanged it for a life where he knew he had the approval of God because Jesus Christ had died for him. He could then die with his final words being “It is surrender”. Total security, because of Jesus.

So my question is – does the life of a Christian seem like foolishness to you? Does the life of Christ himself look like foolishness to you? Maybe. But that apparent foolishness is how God saves us.

To live for Christ is to become a fool in the eyes of the world – but is to find grace and eternity in the arms of God.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” – 1 Corinthians 1:18

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” – Matthew 10:39

As the 2012 Summer Olympics in London approach (July 27 to August 12), I was reminded by an article in Decision magazine of another Summer Olympics that took place years ago. It was 1924 when Eric Liddell, one of the most well-known athletes in Scotland, competed in the Olympics that summer in Paris. On the team representing Great Britan (which, at the time, included Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales), Liddell originally intended to run the 100-meter race, which was his best event. But the race was to be held on Sunday, and Liddell quietly withdrew from the race, not wanting to run, he said, on the day God had set apart for worship and rest. Instead, he trained for the 200- and 400-meter events, even though he was not favored to win either race. He was criticized by many for choosing not to run in the Sunday event, but stuck to a commitment he made years ago, to honor the Lord’s day as a day of rest from work and sports.

Liddell won a bronze for the 200-meter race. Just before his final race, the 400-meter event, one of Liddell’s trainers handed him a note that said, “In the old book [the Bible] it says, ‘He that honors Me I will honor.’ Wishing you the best of success always.”

Eric Liddell won the gold medal for that 400-meter race. And the criticism turned into cheers of admiration.

Liddell’s friend Sir Arthur Marshall wrote of the 400-meter race, “…the 400 metres in some way provided the greatest thrill…with the world record being broken by Eric Liddell three times in two days. It was thought that Liddell had some chance of winning, but nobody thought Liddell capable of the amazing performance he achieved in the final…This was probably the greatest achievement of the VIIIth Olympiad, and superlatives were showered on Liddell by the press of the entire world.”

After the Olympics and graduation from one of the UK’s top universities, the University of Edinburgh, Liddell was a missionary in China until his death in 1943 at a prison camp just months before World War II ended. He left behind a wife and three daughters. He also left behind a rich legacy of faith that inspired many.

Liddell’s story was told in the 1981 Academy Award-winning British film Chariots of Fire (click here to see the movie trailer).

Chariots of Fire is an excellent movie. Have you seen it?  The film was digitally remastered for its’ recent re-release July 13 in the UK, an official part of the London 2012 Olympic Festival celebrations. I’ve read that a Blu-ray edition of the film was released July 10 in North America…I’m planning on getting it!

Sources: Wikipedia, Decision Magazine,  The Eric Liddell Centre, Trailblazer Books.

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 “Each one of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”  Philippians 2:4 NIV

What began as one of the loveliest springs I can remember is fast becoming a nightmare of a summer for farmers, and potentially for all of us in the USA, from coast to coast.

At first I viewed the brutal heat and drought through the tunnel vision of my own sweet little garden.  Then we noticed that the local fields of corn were green, yet the plants lacked any sign of developing ears.  My vision expanded to include the farms in Southeastern Wisconsin.  Every day, sometimes twice a day, I watered our yard area and whatever the hose could reach of our neighbors’ gardens—expecting that any night I’d awake to booming thunder, flashing lightning, and torrents of rain.  It always rains in Wisconsin, at least it almost always did. 

As I watered, I began to realize that maybe we were into this weather for the long haul.  It dawned on me that our wells could dry up.  Now I’m watering the garden far less often—supplementing by using plastic buckets for indoor hand washing of dishes and garments, and then emptying that water onto the outdoor plants which seem the most thirsty.

This week my tunnel vision has exploded to realize that our entire nation is about to be affected in some degree by a severe drought. Crisis!  Calamity!  I can’t help but think that the drought may be judgment on our nation, for having strayed so far from our God! 

No longer can my main concern be my sweet little garden, much as I love it.  I must be concerned with the interests of others, as well as myself!  As I was processing these thoughts, the Lord reminded me of something I read about the Scottish, Olympic Gold Medalist runner Eric Liddell—who served as a missionary in China before and during World War II.

In 1943 Liddell (so beautifully commemorated in the award winning film, CHARIOTS OF FIRE) was interned in a Japanese camp—in a part of China under Japanese control at the time.  Although constantly becoming more ill during his imprisonment, Liddell filled all of his time with tending to the interests of others.  He organized games, taught science lessons to youngsters, insisted that food and other necessities be shared with all, and helped elderly inmates in many ways each day. 

In 1945 Liddell died in the Japanese camp, of an inoperable brain tumor.  His loss was greatly mourned.  Eric Liddell was remembered for his cheerful spirit and his eagerness to be of service to others.

During the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities revealed that before Liddell died, he had refused to leave the Japanese camp in a prisoner exchange arranged by Winston Churchill and the Japanese government.  Rather than seizing the opportunity to join his wife and daughters who had taken refuge in Canada, Eric Liddell gave his release to a pregnant woman.

Eric Liddell has provided a magnificent example of the sacrificial life—ultimately modeled for us by our Lord Jesus Christ!  Wherever this drought may take us, I pray that I will keep my focus on the interests of those around me—even those beyond my sweet little garden. 

And most of all, with the spector of a severe drought hovering over us, we must pray for the rain of revival—for our nation to return to God and His Word!  Unlike my garden hose, prayer has no limits.  God’s Living Water is eternal!

Margaret L. Been, ©2012

—————————————————————————————————————————— 

 “Each one of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”  Philippians 2:4 NIV

What began as one of the loveliest springs I can remember is fast becoming a nightmare of a summer for farmers, and potentially for all of us in the USA, from coast to coast.

At first I viewed the brutal heat and drought through the tunnel vision of my own sweet little garden.  Then we noticed that the local fields of corn were green, yet the plants lacked any sign of developing ears.  My vision expanded to include the farms in Southeastern Wisconsin.  Every day, sometimes twice a day, I watered our yard area and whatever the hose could reach of our neighbors’ gardens—expecting that any night I’d awake to booming thunder, flashing lightning, and torrents of rain.  It always rains in Wisconsin, at least it almost always did. 

As I watered, I began to realize that maybe we were into this weather for the long haul.  It dawned on me that our wells could dry up.  Now I’m watering the garden far less often—supplementing by using plastic buckets for indoor hand washing of dishes and garments, and then emptying that water onto the outdoor plants which seem the most thirsty.

This week my tunnel vision has exploded to realize that our entire nation is about to be affected in some degree by a severe drought. Crisis!  Calamity!  I can’t help but think that the drought may be judgment on our nation, for having strayed so far from our God! 

No longer can my main concern be my sweet little garden, much as I love it.  I must be concerned with the interests of others, as well as myself!  As I was processing these thoughts, the Lord reminded me of something I read about the Scottish, Olympic Gold Medalist runner Eric Liddell—who served as a missionary in China before and during World War II.

In 1943 Liddell (so beautifully commemorated in the award winning film, CHARIOTS OF FIRE) was interned in a Japanese camp—in a part of China under Japanese control at the time.  Although constantly becoming more ill during his imprisonment, Liddell filled all of his time with tending to the interests of others.  He organized games, taught science lessons to youngsters, insisted that food and other necessities be shared with all, and helped elderly inmates in many ways each day. 

In 1945 Liddell died in the Japanese camp, of an inoperable brain tumor.  His loss was greatly mourned.  Eric Liddell was remembered for his cheerful spirit and his eagerness to be of service to others.

During the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Chinese authorities revealed that before Liddell died he had refused to leave the Japanese camp in a prisoner exchange arranged by Winston Churchill and the Japanese government.  Rather than seizing the opportunity to join his wife and daughters who had taken refuge in Canada, Eric Liddell gave his release to a pregnant woman.

Eric Liddell has provided a magnificent example of the sacrificial life—ultimately modeled for us by our Lord Jesus Christ!  Wherever this drought may take us, I pray that I will keep my focus on the interests of those around me—even those beyond my sweet little garden. 

And most of all, with the spector of a severe drought hovering over us, we must pray for the rain of revival—for our nation to return to God and His Word!  Unlike my garden hose, prayer has no limits.  God’s Living Water is eternal!

Margaret L. Been, ©2012

I avoided watching it for a long time because it beat Raiders of the Lost Ark (one of my all-time favourites) for a number of Oscars.  Besides, I’m not a runner, and the movie takes place in the 1920’s.  How interesting could it be?  Very interesting, in fact, and filled with a number of coaching lessons, not just for runners, but for business leaders as well.

Starring Ben Cross and the late Ian Charleson as British sprinters competing in the Paris Olympics of 1924, the film won four Oscars at the 1981 Academy Awards, including best original music for Vangelis’s stirring synth-fuelled score – don’t tell me you haven’t run along to the music in slow motion at some time in your life?

Chariots of Fire is about guts, determination and belief. At the heart of the film is the quest for Olympic glory, with personal challenge resonating throughout. The film depicts the struggles of two British Olympic runners – one Jewish, one a deeply religious Christian – to reconcile their love of running with their respective faiths. Discretion, loyalty and self-sacrifice, questions of faith and refusal to compromise, standing for one’s beliefs, achieving something for the sake of it, with passion and not just for fame or financial gain, are even more vital and relevant today.

After initial indifference, it’s now in my all time top-ten favourites and the very first film as an adult that literally moved me to tears (I cried as a little boy when Bambi’s mum was killed by the hunter, and don’t get me going on Babe) in the scene at the film’s climax of Liddell winning the 400m in record time, and then is held on his teammate’s shoulders as his coach, colleagues and future king applaud him.

The film’s title was inspired by the line, Bring me my chariot of fire, from the William Blake poem adapted into the popular British hymn Jerusalem (the hymn is heard at the end of the film).

The ruthlessly determined Harold Abrahams is the son of a Lithuanian Jew, driven partly by a desire to overcome the anti-Semitic prejudice that he encounters, not least among the dons when he goes up to Cambridge in 1919. He becomes the first person to complete the Trinity Great Court Run, running around the college courtyard in the time it takes for the clock to strike 12. Abrahams achieves an undefeated string of victories in various national running competitions.

Eric Liddell, as the son of a China-based Scottish missionary, is powered by his unremitting Christian faith, something that causes consternation when he pulls out of a 100m Olympics heat because it is to be run on a Sunday. Different in some ways, the two men are markedly similar in others: both show a self-punishing dedication and both jeopardise their emotional relationships with others, to achieve success on the track.

When Eric Liddell accidentally misses a church prayer meeting because of his running, his sister Jennie upbraids him and accuses him of no longer caring about God. Eric tells her that though he intends to eventually return to the China mission, he feels divinely inspired when running, and that not to run would be to dishonour God: I believe that God made me for a purpose. But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.

Liddell’s faith is a problem at the Olympics as the 100m final is slated for a Sunday, but he switches events to the 400m thanks to team-mate Lord Andrew Lindsay, who having already won a silver medal in the 400m hurdles, yields his place in the 400m race on the following Thursday to Liddell, who gratefully agrees. His religious convictions in the face of national athletic pride make headlines around the world.

Abrahams is badly beaten by the heavily favoured United States runners in the 200m race. He knows his last chance for a medal will be the 100m. He competes in the race, and wins. His coach Sam Mussabini is overcome that the years of dedication and training have paid off with an Olympic gold medal. After Abrahams’ victory, the camera cuts away to Mussabini in his hotel room. He looks across to the stadium, and all he sees is the Union flag being raised, and the distant sound of the anthem. And he removes his hat, and punches it. Very few more beautiful scenes in all of cinema.

Before Liddell’s race, the American coach remarks dismissively to his runners that Liddell has little chance of doing well in his now far longer 400m race. But one of the American runners, Jackson Scholz, hands Liddell a note of support for his convictions. Liddell defeats the American favourites and wins the gold medal.

The British team returns home triumphant. As the film ends, onscreen text explains that Abrahams married Sybil, and became the elder statesman of British athletics. Eric Liddell went on to missionary work in China. All of Scotland mourned his death in 1945 in Japanese-occupied China. Liddell’s own story after 1924 could have spawned it’s own film and ironically, this Guardian story on Liddell ran ironically on the anniversary of Charleson’s death in 1991- both strange and wonderful: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/04/50-stunning-olympic-moments-eric-liddell?INTCMP=SRCH

Besides a great, evocative and poignant story, there are several relevant insights to stimulate our current day business thinking:

Look forward, not backwards over your shoulder. Harold, the 100m runner, hires a trainer because he falls short at the finish and doesn’t know why.  His trainer shows him a videotape of the race, where Harold right near the finish looks back at his competition costing him few precious fractions of time.

You can’t press ahead at your goals while at the same time watching what everyone else is doing.  Yes, you need an understanding of the market landscape, just like a runner can’t just wander into other people’s lanes, but other than that keep the focus straight ahead at the goal. It’s very hard to take an objective view and see what you’re doing wrong – that’s why athletes hire coaches.

Stick to your personal values. Eric actually beats out Harold for the Olympic spot and then refuses to run because the race is on a Sunday.  The British government pressures him, and he still won’t run.  As it turns out, a 400m runner gives up his spot so Eric can still represent at the Olympics and maintain the Sabbath.

There will be times when you will feel like you need to do things a certain way in order to move ahead.  Some things may be negotiable but your values are not.  You don’t need to give up who you are to be successful.

Be true to yourself. At the start of the 400m, Eric shakes hands with each of the competitors and introduces himself.  It’s natural for him but in the world of competitive sports it’s completely unexpected.  Then he leaves them in the dust with his superior running ability.

You don’t have to be aggressive or show a killer instinct, if your natural predisposition is to be sunny and warm.  Sure, some work environments will be competitive and will want to hire people in that mould, so you may miss out on these spots. But other environments will prefer warm and welcoming, and if you try to show off a competitive streak, you’ll miss out here. Better to be who you are, and run the race your own way.

Set realistic personal objectives. Harold is driven to be the fastest runner in the world. After watching Abrahams in a 100m race, and – for the first time ever – Abrahams loses, nosed out by Liddell, Mussabini approaches him and says simply:  Mr Abrahams, I can find you another two yards.

What he meant was:  If you train with me and follow my instructions, over the same elapsed time, you can be two yards farther ahead. Why did Mussabini use those exact words?  Why didn’t he say I can make you a winner?  Because Mussabini knew that gaining two yards is absolute, but winning a race is relative.  He could predictably ensure the former, but the latter was beyond his control, because winning a race depends on the other runners, too.

Target improvements in several aspects of your performance Over the next days and weeks, Mussabini improved specific parts of Abrahams’s mechanics and running technique. He shortened Abraham’s stride and lowered his arm action.  He found ways to get more power at the start, and improved the dip at the finish.  All of those things are absolute—they don’t depend on anyone else.

Mussabini also emphasised mental preparation, familiarising Abrahams with the tendencies of his major rivals, not just Liddell but the two leading Americans, Charles Paddock and Jackson Scholz.  It was important to learn their times, their habits, their strengths.  Winning a race would call for every possible advantage. As a result, Abrahams became a faster runner, and he improved his chances of success.

But Mussabini knew better than to guarantee a win.  Why?  Because at the same moment, Abrahams’s rivals were also working on their technique, their conditioning, their mental preparation.  They were all committed to improving themselves, as well.  If Abrahams found those two yards but his rivals improved by two yards and half, he wouldn’t win.  A race is a relative contest, and absolute improvement guarantees nothing.

Company performance is better understood as relative, not absolute.  Following a formula cannot ensure success because if our rivals are doing the same things, we’ll be no better off.  In business, there is a need to do things differently than rivals, which necessarily entails risks.  That’s not a comforting notion – far more pleasant is the idea that managers can follow a simple set of steps to achieve greatness. But of course, that doesn’t work.

For a man whose athletics career was so brief and is now so distant, Liddell continues to cast a lengthy shadow. It took until the 1980 Games for another Scot to win a gold medal, and until 2004 for another China-born athlete to win a gold medal on the track. After the 1980 100m final race, Allan Wells having won the 100m title that Liddell was denied by an accident of scheduling, the victor simply said: That one’s for Eric Liddell

It’s a topic which bothers me somewhat. I think it’s the historian in me coming through. If I see a film that is recreating a real event, I often find myself frustrated if they deviate from the original events. Yet as a blogger I can empathise with the filmmakers. After all, this blog is called Scorpo Stories (it still annoys me that internet addresses don’t allow for apostrophes, because I really want to call this Scorpo’s Stories), and so I always like to intersperse the analytical or commentary pieces with stories from my own life.

Whenever I do this, I always face a the same dilemma that filmmakers face. Do I tell the story in the way that is entirely faithful to the actual events, or do I embellish the story with the odd addition to make the story seem more entertaining than it would have been otherwise? Almost without fail I utilise the first option. Again, an element of that is that if I didn’t the historian in me would be very disappointed (I had to sit through enough debates over the purpose/function of historians to go down that road), and also the fact that a number of them involve people who read this blog, who if I start manipulating the truth for my own benefit could easily pull me up on it.

Yet in another respect I’m not sure why I stick so closely to the truth when repeating stories on here, because it’s not like I don’t do it in real life. None of us do. Not always by telling particularly big lies, but we certainly alter seemingly minor details to make stories seem more interesting. It’s something comedians do all the time – they start out with a funny, real situation and then add a few amusing but plausible additions to the story so that the routine gets more laughs. Great comedy is based on the truth, but that doesn’t mean that everything you hear on stage is 100% truthful.

I think what’s at the heart of the issue is that the precedent has been set. Having chosen the honest option early on, it wouldn’t sit well if I suddenly changed policy almost 1 year down the line (get the 14th July in your diaries to celebrate the first anniversary of this blog). Yet if I’d have set out from the outset with the purpose of delivering posts with the sole aim of entertaining, it would have been fine to add a few bits here and there to spice up otherwise true stories. And this, I believe, is the key – the purpose. People were rightly annoyed by the fake polar bear scenes in the otherwise excellent Frozen Planet, because it was a documentary and therefore it is important that every detail in the programme is true. Yet if the purpose is solely to entertain, then we shouldn’t get too annoyed when films like the infamous U571 are released that totally butcher historical events. Therefore the next time I see a film that is ‘based on real events’, I need to try to remember to judge the film purely as a piece of entertainment, and not let my natural frustration at historical inaccuracies get in the way.

Eric Liddell Memorial, Weifang

So I was delighted to discover that there was one person in that small and increasingly beleaguered group of Britishers in the French Hospital[1] who was connected with Liddell:

I started my medical studies in the summer term of 1924 intending to become a medical missionary like my boyhood hero David Livingston and was admitted to 56 George Square, then a hostel for medical students intending to be medical missionaries…. One of the other residents was a broad-shouldered, rather stocky, not too tall individual with rather a large head and face. This was Eric Liddell who played Wing Three Quarter for Scotland in the Rugby International contests.[2]

The writer was George Graham-Cumming, one of the doctors who stayed out of Stanley to help Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke with his medical welfare work. Ironically, given the interesting life and distinguished career I’m about to outline, he seems best known on the internet for his playful ‘races’ with the future Olympic champion!

 Eric Liddell’s House in Tianjin

It seems that his connection with Liddell nearly ended in disaster:

One day…I got into a friendly tussle with Eric, put a judo leg-hold on his right knee and strained his right thigh. I won that fight but lost all respect and learned what it is to be thoroughly unpopular. Eric was training hard for the Olympic Games to be held in Paris in a few weeks! Fortunately he recovered quickly and showed no reduction in speed to my immense relief.[3]

Medical student high jinks almost deprived Liddell of the Olympic gold, Scotland of a national hero, and the present writer of one of his favourite films.

It’s obvious that from his youth Graham-Cumming had a passion for both Christianity and medicine, and he was preaching while still a student

We all took turns at open air preaching every weekend at the corner of the Cowgate outside that Dispensary.[4]

His admiration for David Livingstone suggests a desire for far away places as well, so he became a medical missionary in China, ending up as a doctor with the Overseas Medical Service in Hong Kong.[5]

He began his medical studies in 1924. After his training he applied to join the Church of England Presbyterian Foreign Missions.[6] In 1936 he wrote a letter to the BMJ describing an injury he’d inflicted on the neonate while carrying out a delivery during his midwifery training in Edinburgh during 1927-28. The letter is written from the English Presbyterian Mission in Shoka, Formosa (now Taiwan) and it refers to his six years practice in China, so he presumably went out in 1930 or thereabouts. [7] Formosa was part of the Japanese Empire at the time so the experience may have come in useful in Hong Kong. I’ve found documents in Chinese that have a short section about him and the years 1934-1937 by his name.[8] His name is linked with that of Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell, Jr., a pioneering missionary to China and Formosa, and my guess is that 1934-1937 were his years of service in the latter, but it would obviously be wrong to draw any firm conclusions before translation.

Dr. Graham-Cumming was married with two daughters (one born in 1931 and the other in 1933). His family are not on the British Army Aid Group list of those living at the French Hospital in December 1942,[9] but they are on the Stanley Camp Roll that was probably drawn up around May 1942, so it seems that they were in Stanley from the start, something he might well have been grateful for as things in town got more dangerous from February 1943 onwards.

He was not one of those arrested on May 2, 1943[10] and was presumably sent to Stanley Camp on May 7 along with 17 others.[11] While in Camp, he no doubt assisted the other doctors in providing a medical service that’s been universally admired for its amazing achievements in the most difficult possible circumstances – a slowly starving, and malnourished population living in cramped and not very hygienic conditions treated with a small and diminishing supply of drugs, yet the death rate, according to internee leader Franklin Gimson was if anything lower than would have been expected in peace time Hong Kong.[12] One of the main ways in which the doctors achieved these results was through the practice of ‘nutritional medicine’ and the one specific activity of Dr. Graham-Cumming’s that I’ve been able to document so far is his role as medical overseer of the programme to grind peanuts into peanut butter. A camp notice of October 12, 1943 announces the inauguration of a grinding programme to replace the then exhausted supply of rice polishings: as Thomas explained in his 1946 article for The British Baker, rice polishing were used by the Camp bakers whenever they could get their hands on them[13] (they’re a good source of B Vitamins) and the peanut butter that replaced it was to be baked into biscuits given to labourers and those suffering from deficiency related eye problems.[14]

Dr. Graham-Cumming survived internment and after the war he seems to have stayed in Hong Kong for a number of years and to have resumed and succeeded in his medical career: on August 14, 1957[15] and November 20, 1957 he attended a meeting of the Legislative Council in the capacity of Acting Director of Medical Services.  This means that he reached the top position in the Hong Kong medical hierarchy, albeit on a temporary basis. It had been  Selwyn-Clarke’s post before the Japanese attack.

According to a report in the Winnipeg Free Press (May 14, 1969, page 24), in 1962 he migrated to Canada: at least he did if he’s the ‘Canadian husband’ of Lois Graham-Cumming (see below). The online ‘traces’ I’ve found fit this idea well, as between 1963 and 1965 he was continuing his religious activities as a lecturer for the Ottawa School of Theology and Spirituality.[16] He’s also documented as lecturing with the Ottawa Lay School of Theology during the same years.[17]

In his new country he worked for the Medical Services, National Health and Welfare Department, as Medical Liaison Officer, based in Ottawa.[18] He obviously specialised in the health of ‘original Canadians’: in the 1960s he published a number of articles on this topic, and in 1967 he wrote a study surveying the situation over the previous 100 years. A contemporary writer has criticised this article for maintaining that the indigenous population, medically weakened by isolation, now paradoxically posed a health threat to the later arrivals; the writer acknowledges that this was the generally agreed idea of the time,[19] and, although the critical analysis is undoubtedly accurate, it seems to me that Graham-Cumming’s involvement with the health of ‘original Canadians’ stems from the same humanitarian impulses that took him to China to care for people who would otherwise have had little access to modern medical treatment.

Also in 1967 he published a report on the health of ‘original Canadian’ babies. This links interestingly with his work in Stanley, as he argued that the fact that such babies had a mortality rate three times that of ‘whites’ was due to the ‘nutrition ignorance’ of their parents. (Winnipeg Free Press, Mach 30, 1967, page 17). 

He was also co-author an article on rodent control in the port of Montreal,[20] and it’s just possible that this gives a hint of the public health speciality that led to his being kept out of Stanley to work in Hong Kong.

I can find nothing online relating to his professional activities after the late 1960s, and it’s possible he retired about this time. But the chances of the internet have preserved a couple of things relating to his final years. In 1996 he was interviewed by Charles Roland for his study of health issues relating to Canadian POWs in Hong Kong and Japan,[21] and in 1997 he and Anne E.[22] Graham-Cumming are listed as donors to the United Nations Association in Canada.[23] He died in 1998.[24] His wife, Lois, a medical statistician[25] who became the part-time Executive Director of the Canadian Nurses Foundation,[26] died in 2003.[27] The obituary gives her date of birth as 1914, while the Stanley Camp Roll lists Mrs. Graham-Cumming as having been born in 1902, so this may indicate a second marriage.

So far I’ve only been able to get a few glimpses of what seems like  a fascinating man. I hope that future research will yield more.