Happy Leap Year Everyone! There are no readings on our plan for February 29 but I wanted to share some thoughts about the God of time, seasons, and leap year.

Why Leap Year?

Have you ever wondered why we have a leap day or a leap year?

The History Channel Website explains it this way:

Nearly every four years, we add an extra day to the calendar in the form of February 29, also known as Leap Day. Put simply, these additional 24 hours are built into the calendar to ensure that it stays in line with the Earth’s movement around the Sun. While the modern calendar contains 365 days, the actual time it takes for Earth to orbit its star is slightly longer—roughly 365.2421 days. The difference might seem negligible, but over decades and centuries that missing quarter of a day per year can add up. To ensure consistency with the true astronomical year, it is necessary to periodically add in an extra day to make up the lost time and get the calendar back in sync with the heavens.

But as believers, we know that while God Himself stands outside of time, He controls everything, including time, the future, history, and even the need for leap year.

Cycles & Seasons

God is a God of order and He ordered the lives of His creation around cycles and seasons of time. Many species of animals, birds, and fish have migratory seasons, times of hibernation, and mating seasons. The earth itself has seasons, weather patterns, and various cycles.

As human beings, our lives are ordered around seasons and recurring events. God ordained festivals and celebrations throughout the Old Testament as a way for His people to remember His work in history but they also served to order their lives.

Believers and unbelievers alike continue to celebrate many seasonal and annual holidays and events. We honor birthdays and anniversaries, as well as, civic and religious holidays. Many of us plan annual vacations. Schools schedule classes according to semesters with regular breaks.

God Himself created the Universe and all that we see in six days and rested on the seventh. He commanded mankind to do the same. There was a time to work and a time to rest. Yesterday we read about His command to the nation of Israel for six years of planting and harvesting with a seventh year for the people and the land to rest. Then every seven sets of seven years there was a year of Jubilee.

A Season for Everything

Solomon penned this:

The longer God allows me to live, the more I understand the truthfulness and wisdom of that passage.

He Changes the Times & the Seasons

In yet another political season and a time, in general, when there is so much darkness in the world, we should remember Daniels’s words to King Nebuchadnezzar:

²⁰ Daniel answered and said:

God is still in control. And ultimately, it will be Him, for His divine purposes, including possible judgment, who will raise up one and put down another. He is in control of the times and the seasons and the events in history.

But those last two lines are also important, “He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him.” 

There is no pass for those who promote or take part in evil. He knows.

And Romans 12.19 says:

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

And in His goodness, He will bring good out of it in ways we may not see or understand. I love Paul’s words to the philosophers at Athens:

²³ … Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: ²⁴ God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. ²⁵ Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. ²⁶ And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, ²⁷ so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; ²⁸ for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring (Act. 17.23-28).

He has preappointed your time and mine. He is sovereignly in control of every aspect of our lives, every blessing, every trial, every year, and every leap year. Each one was designed so we “might grope for Him and find Him.”

All Things, Leap Year & Every Year

And once we have “found Him” (only because He has orchestrated the events of our lives in ways that point us to Him, opened our hearts, and given us the faith to believe), He continues to use all things for good (Rom. 8.28).

While it may not always look good with our limited human vision, it’s a purifying good, sovereignly arranged to progressively conform His children to the image of Christ (Rom. 8.29) and to bring about His plan for the world.

So, Why Leap Year?

If God knows everything, does everything perfectly and is completely in control of time, why does the calendar need readjusting?

Calendars, not just ours but others that have been used throughout history, are man’s attempts to organize time. That desire is part of God’s image in us, an image that was marred at the fall yet remains to a lesser degree.

But man’s attempts to organize time or understand the natural world or anything else will always need to be adjusted because as God reminded Job, He was the One who laid the foundations of the earth, determined its measurements, commanded the morning, and caused the dawn to know its place. And that’s just the beginning. If you have never read Job 38-41, it’s an amazing passage about God’s total knowledge and control.

I’ll be back tomorrow and the rest of this leap year (God willing) with another “God’s Word Day by Day” devotional. 

I hope you’ll join me and, if you haven’t already, take the challenge to read through the Bible with me this year. Even though we may do it imperfectly or miss a day here and there, I find when we set it as a goal, we read far more of God’s Word than we would otherwise. I know we all get far too much email these days but having the daily devotion pop up in your inbox each day can serve as a general reminder to get into God’s Word. It goes out at 6 a.m. MST.

You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest, and now watch on YouTube. Just click on the social media icons or go to my YouTube channel. 

Blessings as you grow in Christ,
Donna ♥

 

I sometimes LINKUP with these blogs.