First quote of the day. “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day,” Mark Twain. I love that! Made me think about a story Chief loved to tell our children. He and a friend were at a restaurant once and the men at the table beside them had ordered frog legs. Every time one of them picked up a frog leg and started to eat it, his friend would make a croaking sound. The first few times the men looked funny at the legs, then they realized it was Chief and his friend. I don’t mind having a frog around, had a tree frog jump on my head once in my bathroom, but I “ain’t” eating their legs!

The day is so pretty. As Ella Fitzgerald says, “Blue skies smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see.” And they are beautiful blue skies on this second day of 2026. The birds are enjoying the sunshine, flitting around the yard, singing and talking while visiting the bird feeders. A small flock of chickadees has joined the usual songbird crowd.

I love to watch the sky transform during the day. The myriad of colors that shade the sky are so vivid and so different every day. Even when the sky look like it’s just one color on a heavy overcast cloudy day, keep looking and blues and grays and all tones of white will be visible. I used to think that white was just white but after I became a nephophile, I noticed how many different shades there are of every color in the clouds’ formations. I think Mother Nature stirs the clouds around with her fingers and mixes the colors up after Father Sky has sketched them with his pastels.

You ever sit on the porch or out in the yard at night and do a little star gazing? Course its too chilly to do that now but I enjoy doing that on warm nights. Some nights before I go to bed, I walk out on the sidewalk or the back deck and look up at the night sky. Just glancing up at the moon and the twinkling stars reminds me we are small creatures on this planet earth. Keep glancing and you will see the wonder that God has created in the velvet sky with his luminous moon and jeweled stars, declaring his love for us and his creation. We witness his power and glory through the night sky. God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.”

A star is a beacon of hope, a light to guide our way, a symbol of love. God can be our star, our lighthouse beacon of love and light, helping us find the way in this new year of new beginnings. The dark nights of our lives aren’t always hopeless because when we ask God for help, his light and his love will brighten even the darkest path. Through prayer we lay our worries in God’s hands and through our prayers of thanksgiving we lay our thank yous on his heart.

Jesus teaches us that we are the lights of the world. We all have the light of God’s love inside our hearts and we should shine our lights to help others who are living in darkness. Just a little light can give hope to the hopeless. No matter how small our star is we can make a difference in the world with our light of God’s love.

“Every child of Heavenly Father born in the world is given at birth, as a free gift, the Light of Christ.” — Henry B. Eyring