February, the shortest month of each year, is typically the month which highlights love and chocolate and friendship. It is also the month which gets us halfway through the winter season and heading toward another spring. In Pennsylvania, we have tagged that particular day as groundhog day, and there is quite a big deal made of it! We know that there will be more sunlight each day for the second half of winter while creation begins to stir from the cold dormant earth.
Valentine Day, each February, has become a blessing for any business which can market heart shaped sweets and mass produced sentiments on cards. The focus on love includes a wide variety of meanings and includes being aware of the health of our physical heart. By the end of the month, Christians begin a forty day season, known as Lent, to focus on our spiritual heart health and the upcoming celebration of Resurrection Sunday and all the events which preceded Christ’s death on the Cross. Love seems to rise to the surface throughout the month, even if it is temporary or forced back into consciousness.
Every four years, February adds one extra day so that the total length of ‘normal’ years, and all the seasonal events, do not get completely off-kilter and become unmanageable. That special year is named Leap Year and brings it own dynamics. Anyone born on a leap year day certainly must love the specialness of an actual day to celebrate while teasing, and being teased, about their age.
All of this gets wrapped up in the word ‘leap’. The year leaps ahead; birth dates leap a person four years ahead instead of just one; seasons continue to leap from one set of circumstances to the next. Within our faith journey, I can see relevant comparisons in all of these events packed into such a short time frame as the month of February. Love takes work and determination but brings great joy and hope. Seasons move at a certain pace for the most part but occasionally bring something extra or need a small adjustment. Our physical heart will keep working at its best when we do not neglect healthy choices.
Our spiritual heart needs so much more! Too often we need to leap into unexpected seasons without much warning, perhaps illness or grief or sudden life events. Are we ready to leap into those uncharted waters? Are we willing to take that leap into whatever new experience is set before us? Do we leap with faith that God will be there to catch us in His loving arms? Will we leap ahead in faith that He has prepared the way and will walk with us when we land where He wants us in that new season? Look around, be aware of what is happening, then turn toward the Son and take that leap in peace!
