Bringing the Text to Life
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....