Leap Year
	Do you know why “leap year” is called leap year? A normal calendar year is 365 days – which comes to fifty-two weeks and one day. So, from one regular year to the next, we expect certain dates to advance one day. For example, if your birthday was on Monday last year, you might expect it to be on Tuesday this year. However, a true year is longer than 365 days – about ¼ of a day longer. So, every four years, we add one day onto February to bring the calendar back into sync with our annual trip around the sun. So, in a leap year, your birthday moves ahead two days from last year. If it was Monday last year, it will be Wednesday this year. You have to “leap” over the usual one-day difference.
	Generally, you can tell which year is leap year by seeing if the number is evenly divisible by four. This is 2012, which is divisible by four, so it’s a leap year. But, of course, it can’t be that simple. And it isn’t. An actual year isn’t precisely 365 ¼ days long. It’s really 365.242374 days (the decimal is just a tiny bit less than ¼ ). So, every few hundred years it’s time to ignore leap year. The rule is: If a year is evenly divisible by 100, but not by 400, then it is NOT a leap year. For example, the year 2000 was divisible by four (obviously). It was also divisible by 100, and by 400. So, it was a leap year. But. let’s fast-forward to the year 2100. It is divisible by four and 100, but it is NOT evenly divisible by 400, so it will not be a leap year. Same holds for 2200 and 2300. When we get to 2400, it is divisible by four, 100, and 400, so that will be another leap year.
	If we never knew or understood why there is a leap year, we would suffer no ill effects as far as our relationship with God is concerned. Of far more importance is that we realize that our days on this earth are limited. King David prayed, “Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the measure of my days, that I may know how frail I am. Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths, and my age is as nothing before you. Certainly every man at his best is but a vapor” (Psalm 39:4, 5). James echoes these words – “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15).
	Yes, today is February 29th. This is leap year. But the bottom line is, it’s one more day that God has given us. Like every other day of every other year, it’s up to us what we do with this day. An elder of a congregation I once served said something that has stuck with me. He was not one to sit around doing nothing. He said, “Whatever I do today, I’ve given a day of my life for it.” He is right. None of us knows how many days are left; but we can and should use each day, and each hour of each day, to glorify the God Who gave us life in the first place.
	--Joe Slater (Justin, TX)