Running the Race

Bridget Perkins has sent a sharply worded note to Pastor Wilson Knox, and now he has asked her to meet him at Whit's End to talk it over. Bridget is annoyed. Her little brother Wyatt keeps attending church youth events, which leaves her stuck driving him around, and he keeps pestering her to join the youth group herself because the church encourages him to share his faith. Worse, in her view, Wyatt has been running around the backyard shouting Bible verses about fighting the good fight and being content in every situation. Bridget calls the whole idea of commitment and contentment "a bunch of hooey." How can anyone be content, she demands, when they are poor, or sick, or when they try their hardest and fail? Pastor Knox promises to introduce her to a real person who was committed to difficult tasks and content even when those tasks seemed impossible. His plan is the Imagination Station, and he loads a program about Eric Liddell, a Scottish sprinter and Olympian. Bridget will experience scenes from Liddell's life, taking part as different people he knew, while Knox pops in as various characters along the way.

Suddenly Bridget finds herself in the Liddell home in Tientsin, China, in 1906, playing the family's nursemaid, NeNe. Four-year-old Eric is the son of James Liddell, a Scottish missionary, and the boy is already so fast his father jokes about needing a quicker nursemaid. Then Eric falls seriously ill, and Bridget watches James pray over his sleeping son, asking God to make him strong in body and in spirit. When Eric recovers, his father patiently coaches him as he stumbles and tries to run again. Bridget protests that the boy is too weak, but Eric refuses to give up, shouting, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me!" as he finally runs.

The scene shifts to a ship bound for Scotland. James is enrolling Eric at Eltham College, a London boarding school for missionaries' children, while he returns to his calling in China. Bridget is appalled that father and son will be apart for years and asks James how he can seem so calm about leaving his boy. James answers that he has spent Eric's whole life teaching him to trust the Lord and find strength and contentment in Christ in every circumstance, and he cannot abandon that belief now that the true test has come. Eric himself tells Bridget he won't really be alone, because with Jesus he always has the best friend.

At Eltham, Pastor Knox appears as Headmaster Robertson, sporting an accent so shaky that Bridget questions it. Bridget is now a new student at the girls' school, and Eric, who has noticed her sitting by herself, has asked to be introduced. He invites her to join clubs and sports, and when she learns he knows her father is away, the headmaster reminds her that at a school for missionaries' children, everyone's parents are away. Eric simply says, "You looked like you could use a friend," and promises not to push. Bridget softens enough to offer to watch his games and races.

Years pass within the adventure. In chemistry class, thirteen-year-old Eric offers to tutor Bridget and admits he is a bit conflicted: he knows he wants to return to China someday, but he isn't sure he is called to be a missionary. Being content, he explains, doesn't mean you never feel it when things get tough; it means you always have someone with you who is bigger than your feelings.

Then, during the Great War, a letter arrives at rugby practice. Eric's father, though sick, sailed to help poor farmers and laborers in China, and a German U-boat torpedoed the ship, killing more than five hundred people. No one knows whether James Liddell is alive or dead. Bridget offers positive thoughts, but Eric gently insists that good thoughts and prayers are not the same thing, because prayer means talking to the Creator of the universe. Though he admits he feels sad, angry, and scared, he trusts that God's love is more than enough, and that his father, whatever has happened, "knows to whom he belongs." In that dark moment, Eric declares that if his father is gone, someone must carry on his work, and he believes God is calling him to be a missionary. Then he heads off to play his rugby match. Stepping outside the story, Bridget anxiously asks Pastor Knox what really happened, and is relieved to learn James was never on the sunken boat and served in China for years afterward.

Bridget is puzzled by all the rugby, since she thought Eric Liddell was an Olympic sprinter. Knox explains that Eric was a champion rugby player too, good enough to make a career of it, but God had other plans. In the final scene, a cheering crowd chants Eric's name after a race, and Tom McKercher, the Edinburgh University track coach, approaches. He tells Eric he has talent that needs to be harnessed and invites him to train to become a world-class runner. When Eric asks why he would want that, the coach delivers the answer that ends part one: "Because you have to be world class to go to the Olympics."