Bright, blue, and brisk would be the way to describe this morning. It is 30° out and the wind chimes have not stopped their song. The Doves sit still in the sun all puffed up to keep in the warmth. The surrounding firebushes are full of Cardinals again this morning and the warm water in the bird bath has had several visitors. The last days of January are upon us.

I see a lot of empty feeders out there this morning which tells me the squirrels and the "flying pigs", as I often call my birds, have been busy yesterday afternoon. I guess I will put on my coat and gloves after I finish my blog and coffee, and go out and refill everything. This is an every other day task it seems. I also need to pick up another 50# bag of black oil sunflower seed as my can is half empty. Or perhaps I should wait and use all of this up so it doesn't dry out. After all, we wouldn't want the birds to have to eat "stale" seeds.

My heart overflows with joy this morning for our middle daughter, Heather, who announced her engagement to the family last evening as we "family chatted" through the Facebook messaging system. Her new fiance' is John Watson, and we all have met him and think he is a great guy. The entire family is excited for her. So we end up uber-prayers of gratitude this morning and pray they will have a life-time of love and happiness.

Today will be a rather busy day I reckon. Besides filling bird feeders, today is the day we go to the churches and do the administrative stuff that we do every week. Then we will stay for choir practice. Hopefully we will have a good turn out for choir since we are beginning work on the cantata. Interestingly enough, I learned last evening that many of the churches in our denomination do not do cantatas for special days like Easter and Christmas. I was surprised by that. I guess I assumed that if you had a choir, they would do a cantata. I really must be a die-hard traditionalist! Having now discovered this makes me even more grateful for our faithful dozen plus that work so hard at St. Lucas. We don't have a choir at St. Paul's and I try to encourage some of them to join in with the choir at St. Lucas, but my success has been extremely minimal.

I give my prayers of gratitude this morning that the blizzard of the northeast part of the country was not as bad as was expected and our family members up there are all safe and sound and kept the power and lights through the storm. They will have to do some digging out but that comes with the location. I also offer prayers for healing this morning for several of our parish members that have colds and flu like symptoms. One of our fellows was supposed to have knee replacement surgery yesterday and couldn't because he came down with a cold.

It is a beautiful day out there. It is a day that reflects the power and the glory of God. I urge each and every one of you to take a few minutes to reflect and be grateful for the peace that God can give you. My prayers this morning also go for a parishioner who is having difficulties on the job and is facing some hard decisions. God will guide him to the right path if he only will let go of his anxiety and fears of failure. The old adage; " If God leads you to it, God will lead you through it" certainly applies in this case, and is something that applies to all of us. Have a blessed day.