My life is full of kudos and awesomeness

Well, it has to be said, I am pretty awesome.  Or so the run program Strava tells me every time someone decides to stalk, er, follow me on Strava to see how amazingly awesome I am at running.

And then there’s the kudos!  Don’t talk to me about the kudos!  I get so many of them on Strava there should be kudos given out for people who give the highest number of kudos. Meanwhile I have been returning the favour and giving kudos out like there is no tomorrow cos there might not be. With all that, AND the personal records Strava keeps telling me that I am smashing, I eat awesomeness for breakfast.

Even the spam on my blog confirms it.  Check this out, for instance. It came in the other day and I have half a mind to let it through the net and into the public domain it is so effusive in its praise of me:

You’re so awesome! I do not think I’ve truly read a single thing like this before. So good to discover someone…

And that’s where the letter tailed off, cos they were so lost in wonder, love and praise. And it’s kinda good, right, that they have truly not read a single thing like this before, cos that shows I didn’t plagiarise it.

It had all been going so well until yesterday. What happened yesterday? Well, yesterday I just received this chilling email message from Strava, and quite frankly it left me a little sleepless last night:

Hi Stephen,

Uh oh! Bill Miller just took your CR on Waterfall to Tunnel Bypass by 1 minute 37 seconds.

What?  Who is Bill Miller when he’s at home? (and not out smashing records on the John Forrest National Park Trail).  My first thought was confusion then despair, followed by anger, and finally acceptance.  But not panic. Never panic.  There must be some sort of reason why I am no longer as awesome as I once was.  And maybe Bill did a slow run to that section, busted out the section, then slowed down to a wheezing gagging mess. Hey, maybe he was helicoptered in to that very spot, with a full medical team and sports psychiatrist, just to beat my record and hoover up some of the awesomeness that is rightfully mine.  After all, I’m so awesome I don’t get out of bed for less than 15 km a day.  I probably took that record when I was injured/tired/overtrained/ill etc etc.  But just to be on the safe-side (probably the dangerous side – Run Coach Ed), I’m gonna have to get out there as soon as I finish this and take that record back, just to show that I am, like, ya know, the most awesomest runner on the trail, much more awesomer than that Bill Miller, whoever he is.

Which all makes the preparation for Providence Midland’s next teaching series kinda difficult, a series on Romans chs1- 4. I just read through it and I don’t look so awesome!  I’m not getting any kudos (neither are you sunshine!), and in fact the only records I seem to have broken are the “The number of days in a row a person can worship and serve created stuff rather than the Creator” (I’m writing my acceptance speech already).

So despite the fact that the Bible tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”, that we were created as the pinnacle of God’s created order, that we are cherished and loved by God, the “awesome” language is reserved for Him and Him alone.  Romans says my track record still stands: “I am not righteous, I do not understand, I do not seek God.”

Yet, and amazingly so, the awesome God has done something far beyond my wildest dreams.  He has given me a status with Him that I do not deserve: he has declared me, not to be awesome, but to be justified with him – to be “in the right”.  Which kinda puts all my attempts at trying to be awesome firmly in their place, and kinda gives Him all of the kudos for his love and mercy in doing so.  In a world in which everybody is “super” it’s a difficult message to digest, but let me finish with the words of another runner, Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame, a runner who knew this awesome God and his amazing justification:

I believe that God made me for a purpose… but He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.

Awesome or not,  Kudos or none, the truth that God alone can claim the title of Awesomest makes my feet fairly fly!