Last Saturday was Feb 29th and this year we mark a leap year. A leap year is added to our calendar to keep it working properly. The earth travels around the sun in one year but in fact it takes a little longer, 365 1/4 days. The Leap year every four years corrects this. The chances of being born in a Leap year are 1 in 1500. Any year that can be divided by 4 is a Leap Year.
Of course for anyone whose birthday is on Feg 29th, it is indeed a special day.

For all of us we too need to correct ourselves on occasions. We steer off course, we lose focus, we drift and particularly when it comes to spiritual matters. It is good to recheck and get going again. Thankfully with God we don’t have to wait every four years!

Every time we set aside a moment of prayer is our chance to reconnect spiritually. The journey of Lent which we have just begun, is a chance to create more space in our busy lives for some quiet moments of prayer. We sometimes feel such moments of prayer must be long and extended to have any value. This is not the case and often shorter is so much better.

Prayer is when we connect to the energy of God that is all around us. Sometimes we are very much aware of the presence of God in our lives and sometimes it just doesn’t happen. The best starting point is to know that God is with us where we are right now. Whatever is going on for us right now is the most important moment to start with and stay with.

This calls for honesty. It pulls in a whole range of feelings of where we might be right now, from content, upset, angry, anxious, unsure, scared, happy, sad, fulfilled, stressed, hopeful or whatever. Honesty in prayer and saying what’s going on for us right now is so precious. Having shared the honest moment means that the prayer has not been a waste of time. What a pity if this only happened every four years. But when we can weave these short little moments of prayer into our daily routine, we are connecting to the energy or presence of God all around us. This is a good place to be.