It’s really beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.  Every day we add a little more cheer.  John has been figuring out how to hang the stars we got at the Christmas Market in Frankfurt.  They are glorious!

Stars like this hang in thousands of windows in Germany every year.  I love them and love the idea of that Christmas star that shone over Bethlehem on that Holy Night.

We found a way to light them with small battery packs of “Fairy Lights” that come with a remote control.  You can set them to shine or twinkle.

We also hung an outdoor star in the gazebo.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell wrote:

“The same God that placed that star in a precise orbit millennia before it appeared over Bethlehem in celebration of the birth of the Babe has given at least equal attention to placement of each of us in precise human orbits so that we may, if we will, illuminate the landscape of our individual lives, so that our light may not only lead others but warm them as well.”

At another time, Elder Maxwell expressed the idea this way: “[God’s] planning and precision pertain not only to astrophysical orbits but to human orbits as well. … Like the Christmas star, each of us, if faithful, has an ordained orbit.”