Bringing the Text to Life
Leaping Years Deuteronomy 26:1-11
As a date on the calendar, this day is unique. When the next one rolls around, one generation will be gone, another will have arrived to take its place. Are there truths that can leap over the years, and give meaning to the lives of people in every age and era?
For an alternate approach pertaining to Luke 4:1-13, see The Chicken Catcher.
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....