It’s LEAP YEAR!!!!

But what on earth does that mean? Cue www.Wikipedia.org…

“A leap year (or intercalary or bissextile year) is a year containing one additional day (or, in the case of lunisolar calendars, a month) in order to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical or seasonal year.^[1] Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat in a whole number of days, a calendar that had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected. A year that is not a leap year is called a common year.

For example, in the Gregorian calendar (a common solar calendar), February in a leap year has 29 days instead of the usual 28, so the year lasts 366 days instead of the usual 365. Similarly, in the Hebrew calendar (a lunisolar calendar), a 13th lunar month is added seven times every 19 years to the twelve lunar months in its common years to keep its calendar year from drifting through the seasons too rapidly.”

Basically, WE GET AN EXTRA DAY!!!! BUT Wait! There’s More…

“Leap years occur every four years in year numbers evenly divisible by four.

There are two exceptions. So the years 2004 and 2008 were leap years, and 2012 will be.

Years divisible by 100, such as 1900 or 2100, are NOT leap years.

Years evenly divisible by 400, such as 2000, ARE leap years.

One unexpected result of the above is that while most people didn’t give a thought to the leap year during year 2000, it was in fact very rare. 1600 is the last century year (prior to 2000) that would have an additional day, and it will not happen again until the year 2400.”

Thank you wiki.answers.com!

Now you know if you didn’t already that February 29th doesn’t come very often.

Life changing? Probably not. However, think of how often you’ve thought, “If I only had a few more hours.” or “There just aren’t enough hours in a day.” While the hours in the day haven’t increased, you did just gain an entire 24 hrs!

Why is any of this important??? What’s the point? The way I see it is that every moment of every day is a precious gift from God and at the end of my days I want to be found faithful with the days I have been given. So, when I’m given an “extra day” I’m extremely grateful!

And thus the question must be asked, how have you spent this 1x in every four year opportunity?

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