
This book of short missionary biographies was recommended by Amanda Baker at the 2023 Ladies' Day, along with its companion volume, Daring Dependence.
I just started it today but it already hit me very deeply with its bio of Eric Liddell, one of my favorite missionaries ever. Eric was the subject of the wonderful 1981 Best Picture winning movie, Chariots of Fire. The movie tells of Eric's participation on the British team in the 1924 Olympics, where he bravely refused to run his event because it was scheduled on Sunday. In a swap with two other runners, he won gold in an event for which he had not trained and a teammate won gold in Eric's event.
A short footnote at the end of the film tells us that Eric Liddell died as a missionary in China in 1945. He died in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. All records of his time in that camp, including the account in Daring Devotion, mention that he was a kind, generous pastor to his fellow prisoners, even when all standards of decency sometimes vanished among them in the general struggle to stay alive during World War II.
Now, in a huge twist of irony, Noel and I just today watched a 1987 movie, also British, called Empire of the Sun. Somehow we completely missed this epic historical (squeaky clean) film by Stephen Spielberg back when it came out. Since that was the year we got engaged and I prepared to transfer from London to Germany, I guess I can see how we avid history buffs could have missed this!
The actor Nigel Havers, who had played one of Eric Liddell's fellow runners in Chariots of Fire, was also in Empire of the Sun. In the second movie, he plays the doctor in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for British citizens in China! He befriends a young British boy who was separated from his parents when Shanghai was overrun by the Japanese. Together with a few other memorable characters, they make it through the war, nearly starving at several points.
The scene where parents are brought to the camp at war's end to try to locate the children who got separated from them years before is heartbreaking. I was literally sobbing when Jim, who really grew up during the war, didn't initially recognize his parents. I said to Noel, "These kinds of things really happened during World War II." He said, "They still do. Ukraine, Sudan. Those things are still happening."
In a place of such heartbreak and darkness, God sent Eric Liddell to preach about the light of Jesus Christ.
I cannot wait to read the other 30 bios to see where else God sent His children to be lights in the darkness.
I am finishing the book now and can highly recommend these stories of God’s great cloud of witnesses (as Pastor points out, the Greek noun for martyr and the Greek noun for witness are the same).
The oldest story is Patrick, of St. Patrick’s Day, missionary to Ireland not long after the Bible closed.
The stories include David Brainerd and other missionaries to Native Americans, Amy Carmichael’s work with throwaway children in India, George Muller’s work with English orphans and his contributions to China Inland Missions as Hudson Taylor was starting the agency, Adoniram Judson and the two wives and several children he lost in Burma/Myanmar, and many more amazing testimonies to God’s faithfulness and equipping.
Oh my, Mary! I missed the Ladies Fellowship but I must have these books as well! Amazon??