We Are All Missionaries: On the Life of Eric Liddell
There are days when I reassess what it means to be a Christian. And on those days, I often find myself returning to a wise expression Eric Liddell once said: “We are all missionaries. Wherever we go, we either bring people nearer to Christ or we repel them from Christ.”
The words hit me like cold water in a scorching day, refreshing, rejuvenating and confirming. They remind me, uncomfortably, that my life is always saying something about God, even when I’m not speaking. And when I look at Liddell’s story, it’s as though his footsteps whisper back, “This is what it could look like.”
What strikes me most is not his gold medal, or the fact that he ran as if lifted by wind. What moves me is that before he ever touched an Olympic track, he spent an hour every morning in prayer. An hour—while the sky still yawned with dawn. I can picture him, head bowed, the quiet around him like a shelter. That kind of devotion is not flashy; it’s not the kind of thing a stadium cheer for. But it built in him a strength that’s harder to measure—like roots hidden under soil, gripping deep enough to hold firm against any storm.
And Liddell’s life had storms.
There’s the moment everybody knows when he refused to run the 100-meter heats on a Sunday. People thought he was throwing away his chance at greatness. But instead of arguing, he stood there as calm as a stone in a river. He didn’t posture; he didn’t rage. He simply lived what he believed. His faith didn’t flash like lightning; it held steady like a lantern. And because of that, people noticed.
Later, when he ran the 400 meters—his “unfamiliar” race—he looked almost out of place on the track. But someone had slipped a note into his hand before the race with a verse: “He who honours Me, I will honour.” Liddell ran as if God Himself cupped the air behind him. His victory wasn’t just athletic—it felt like a quiet confirmation that the true race is the one run with integrity.
But the part of his life that haunts me most gently is what came after the Olympics, when he slipped away from fame like someone closing a door behind him. He returned to China as a missionary teacher—no headlines, no crowds—just dusty classrooms and children with curious eyes. In the internment camp years later, when food was scarce and tempers sharp, Liddell became a peacemaker, a servant, a friend. Teenagers who lived beside him said he never stopped helping others, even when his own energy ran thin. They said he played games with them, taught them, prayed with them. One boy remembered how his face lit up when he talked about Christ as if joy flickered in him like firelight.
When I try to imagine that camp, I picture Auschwitz: a despair hanging low like fog. Yet Liddell walking through it with a gentleness that cut a path for others. He was tired, ill, and overworked, yet the way he lived drew people toward God like warmth draws cold hands.
And this is where his life reaches into mine:
If he could reflect God’s love in a place like that, then what excuse do I have in the ordinary places I walk?
When Liddell said, “We are all missionaries,” he wasn’t talking about geography. He meant something far more uncomfortable: we represent Christ with every choice, every word, every reaction. Just by being human—created in the image of God—we become mirrors. Some mirrors shine. Some scatter the light. Some crack under pressure. But mirrors always reflect something.
And I must ask myself:
What do people see when I pass by?
Do they catch even a faint glimmer of Christ?
Or do they see something less?
Liddell’s life tells me that holiness doesn’t look like perfection. It looks like direction. It looks like a life leaning into God, step by imperfect step. It looks like steady prayer at dawn. It looks like small kindnesses under pressure. It looks like choosing obedience when the world is shouting for compromise.
Most of all, it looks like this: a human being—fragile, flawed, mortal—reflecting God’s light into places that need it.
Eric Liddell ran fast on the track, yes. But the race that matters, the one I feel tugging at me, is the one he ran every day—the race of living as if God truly matters, as if every moment carries the weight of eternity.
And maybe that’s the meaning I’m meant to carry:
I don’t have to run like Liddell.
But I do have to live like the Christ who shaped me.
Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their distress,
and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27 (BSB).
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