Leaping Years

The last time we worshiped on a Sunday, February 29, Gerald Ford was hitting golf balls into spectators who were wearing leisure suits, and we were about to celebrate the country’s bicentennial. The next time, in 2032, nanobots will be used in surgery and instead of laptops, we’ll have paper computers we can roll up like a newspaper. But are there any timeless truths that leap across these generations that are still worth remembering?

February 29, 1976.

It’s the last time the church convened on a Sunday, February 29, to worship God. Leap years happen every four years, so they — per se — are not rare or even noteworthy. What’s interesting about this particular date is that it is a fifth Sunday in February. There are five Sundays in February only once every 28 years, so it is truly a once-in-a-generation event.

Twenty-eight years ago, we were celebrating the United States Bicentennial – 200 years after our independence. The supersonic Concorde airliner made its first commercial flights, the Viking 1 spacecraft landed on Mars, Chinese leader Mao Zedong died, and Jimmy Carter was elected president. There was no Reagan Revolution, no fall of the Berlin Wall, no Gulf War 1 or 2, no Hubble Space Telescope, no AIDS epidemic, no Starbucks coffee shops, no Star Wars, no Harry Potter series, no World Wide Web. Bill Gates was just a teenage geek with acne. No e-mail.

The next time we will meet on a Sunday, February 29, is 2032....