On a whim…

When I would visit Crate Elliot, he would inevitably declare, “I’m livin’ on borrowed time, Preacher.”

Are not we all?

Until he entered my circle of friends, I thought borrowed time meant waiting for the reckoning. Watching him tend his garden and honor his wife with its produce, I learned a different lesson: borrowed time is a lens.

It reveals how the small enriches life — the nick on a cup, the cadence of an old friend’s greeting, the way sunlight lingers on a porch rail — until each ordinary thing becomes revelation.

Yes, there is a mild terror in knowing our days are bound. But there is also a clearer joy in choosing, every morning, what to keep. If grace appears anywhere, it is in the hands we extend when we know the hours are not infinite.

That is how I try to live now: making small deposits of tenderness, balancing a ledger with laughter and apology, learning to call the ordinary holy.

Life stretched long and thin pales beside a life meaningfully measured by small mercies extended in love, however short it may be. Living on borrowed time, I’ve come to see, is like living on the edge of infinity.