Another Kind of Race
Lou Zamperini was “saved” from his liferaft ordeal by a Japanese patrol boat. He spent the rest of the war in prison camps where he endured even worse deprivations, losing the faith that he had found on the life raft. As he put it, “ I believed that my date with death was set. ”205 He lived, but without hope. His day-to-day existence was filled with fear and hatred.
Zamperini returned home after the war to a welcoming family and a certain amount of fame. He was soon married and seemed on his way back to a normal life, at least on the surface. All the while, however, he had recurring nightmares of his prison experiences. He tried to drown his bitterness in alcohol. Excessive drinking, business failures, and marital problems led to an inevitable downward spiral. He occasionally thought of God in his hopelessness, but he now blamed God for deserting him.
On a September day in 1949, Zamperini’s wife insisted he go with her to a meeting in a tent on the corner of Washington and Hill Streets in downtown Los Angeles. The speaker was a little-known preacher named Billy Graham. Under great protest, he went, and, with great antipathy, listened. Little by little, he was convicted by Graham’s patient and persistent presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Earlier in his life he had been an Olympic runner. He now realized that he was in another kind of race, a race for his life:
I dropped to my knees and for the first time in my life truly humbled myself before the Lord. I asked Him to forgive me for not having kept the promises I’d made during the war, and for my sinful life. I made no excuses. I did not rationalize, I did not blame. He had said, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” so I took Him at His word, begged for His pardon, and asked Jesus to come into my life.206
Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.
—Hebrews 12:12