Eric Liddell is remembered for refusing to run on a Sunday at the 1924 Olympics. But the moment that shaped everything came earlier — on an ordinary morning run through the streets of Edinburgh.
Just Another Training Day
It was 1922. Liddell was a university student and a promising athlete, but not yet famous. He was running his usual route, the kind of training session he'd done hundreds of times. Edinburgh in the early morning: cobblestones, grey sky, his breath visible in the cold air.
He wasn't praying. He wasn't having a spiritual crisis. He was just running.
Something Shifted Mid-Stride
Somewhere during that run, Liddell felt a clarity he couldn't manufacture. He described it to his sister Jenny as a sudden awareness that his ability to run was connected to something larger — that the joy he felt mid-stride wasn't just endorphins but something given. He later put it into the words that became his most famous line: "God made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure."
This wasn't a dramatic conversion. Liddell had grown up in a missionary family and already believed in God. But that morning run turned belief into something felt. Running became, for him, a form of worship — not because of theology but because of a mid-stride moment when the ordinary became transparent to the divine.
He Ran Differently After That
The change wasn't visible to spectators, but it was real to Liddell. Every race after that Edinburgh morning was, for him, an act of response. When he later gave up competitive running to become a missionary in China, people called it sacrifice. Liddell didn't see it that way. He'd already discovered that God was in the running. Going to China was just running in a different direction.
What This Means for You
God met Eric Liddell during a training run. Not in a church, not at an altar, not during a prayer meeting. On the cobblestones. In the cold. Mid-stride. Whatever you're good at — whatever makes you feel most alive — pay attention. That feeling might be more than just you enjoying yourself. It might be a clue.