WE ARE ALL VERY ODD

This is a leap year.  This odd 29th day in an oddly short month. Our Gregorian calendar records 365 days in a year. This is all good and well, except that it takes the earth 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes, and 56 seconds to make its way around our sun. So, there’s this little bit of time to account for and we make room for these hours every four years.

As I write this, it is the 29th day of February, 2024. What to do with this odd, unique, extra day?

A calendar causes us to see time as destinations on a linear scale. In reality, time is travel; a voyage through space.

Our life is this journey; a pilgrimage in which we are being formed and transformed. Like a baby in a womb, we are formed, and we grow, but we are also transformed by the growth.  Although I have the same DNA I had in my thirties, I am no longer the person I was then.

In my thirties there was so much certainty. I had made up my mind about things – what was right, what was wrong and what my life should look like. This certainty tended to be conceited and somewhat dangerous, making little room for failure.  The grace of God (and others) has transformed me and the person I am today, thirty years on, is different. I see more nuances and dimensions and it humbles me. I am more careful with others and with myself.

Today, this extra day of the year, I hope to hold people more gently. To be delicate with these exquisite creatures God has created. To see in them his image, which is rare and beautiful. Each one is inimitable, incomparable and to be treasured. My certainty, my arrogance, my informed or uninformed opinion of them is of no consequence in the light of God’s love for them. My self-satisfaction (or my self-loathing) becomes meaningless in the command to love my neighbor as I love myself.

With this extra day, let us take the time to remind ourselves that we are each created in the image of the inimitable God, and this makes us odd like the day – unique and to be cherished.

May we think on these things!