Borrowed Time

Christmas Eve awakens me at my usual 5 AM, but without the clock radio going off.  It's actually the sound of heavy rain drops that have persisted throughout the night that nudge me out of bed.  How wonderful to be blessed with rain, real rain, not just a light dusting of water.  The trees, the grasses, the mountains all seem to be rejoicing with each drop.  And the promise of snow for our mountains and foothills is on its way this coming week.  I always think that God graces this time of year with the best decorations, the golden crimson leaves, that dance in the windy breeze, the spotless crystal skies, and the orange harvest moon wrapped in silky clouds at night. 

 

As I drive home each night from my new job, I weave in and out of side streets in small local towns that make up the suburbs of our Inland Empire.  I have enjoyed the festive Christmas lights that fill the main streets of each one and of their shopping centers, as well as the houses that have gone all out with wrapping their exteriors with as much color and sparkle as they can muster.  Yes, 'tis the season of lights to celebrate!

 

Arriving home, I am greeted with an excited Gypsy Rose, ready for her dinner "Kong" and ready to play.  It's nice to have a happy buddy to welcome you home each day.  As I walk through the shell of the front of our house, still awaiting for full repairs to be done, I find myself filled with intermittent memories throughout the years of those Christmas times with my parents, my son, as well as other "in-laws" and nephews.  I think I may have to thumb through some old photo albums to smile again at those days.  I come to grips with the fact that time moves on, and I arrive too soon to the older side of it.

 

We attended a most beautiful funeral mass for our beloved neighbor, Dolly.  Our friendship had been from the start when we moved into our home 27 years ago.  Graciously, she allowed me year after year, to come and pick from her orange, tangerine and lemon trees.  It was like being in the Garden of Eden, filled with fragrant citrus smells.  She always radiated joy and humor, ever being so welcoming. She had just missed her 94th birthday by a month.  It still seems so strange to walk by her home and not see her sitting out in her garage. 

 

We all live on borrowed time.  No one knows how long that will be, for there is no way to predict.  Time is a gift freely given every 24 hours and what we do with it is ours to decide.  I would like to think that I am making the most of it, but truth be told, I often miss out on savoring the most precious times.  Relationships are my cherished possessions that I want to share in.  I am grateful that God chose to be a relational being, so relational that He took on human skin.  He stepped into the borrowed time of earthly life.   Lived out his life by forming relations with others, and showed us through His example and words how to truly live with one another, in spite of who we are.  I can't get over the fact that indeed I did have cancer, now over 3 years ago.  Yet, here I am, living on very borrowed time, when by all statistics, my life should have ended back then.  

 

But I am going forward, despite my insecurities and doubts, I will be intentional as I reach out to family and friends today.  I just want them to know that they are loved and appreciated.  I have always held the understanding of the Scripture passage found in Philippians 2:5-11 that although Jesus shared complete equality with God, He chose to lay aside that status to be confined to humanness and even death itself, for all for us.  That basically means, that Jesus in spite of being God Himself and Creator of this cosmos, gave that up to share life with us.  But recently, I have read another possibility for those verses, since the original language is a bit ambiguous.  It also could be interpreted that because Jesus shared equality with God, He chose to empty Himself all the way down to earth to actually live and breathe as a created being.  That describes the very character of God Himself, the fact that He is love and He chose to demonstrate it in a way that we could perhaps comprehend better.  When I ponder that, I am keenly aware of an unimaginable outpouring of love, all the way down to even insignificant me.  It's as if the Magnificent One became as lowly as the water beetle that flounders in our pool.   He confined His divinity and brilliance to relate to me in a way even I could understand.  What love!  

 

 That indeed is the Christmas message of love and hope unfathomable, and inspires me to not want to waste any more
moments of my precious borrowed time . . .