We had just experienced a most spectacular thunderstorm with brilliant lightning, crashing thunder and pelting rain. After the storm, and while it was still sprinkling, I went for a walk around my gully and dam, to see how they had fared. 

As I was looking at one of the river oaks, the sun came out from behind the black thunder clouds, and lit up all the tiny droplets of water clinging to the oak needles, and refracted them into all of the brilliant colours of the rainbow. As these tiny droplets twinkled in their brilliant reds, yellows, greens, blues and whites, they turned the oak tree into a Christmas tree with such 

delicacy, that they made electric fairy lights look crude, industrial and fake.

I felt really blessed that I had been given the loveliest Christmas tree ever. As the sun sank below the horizon, all of the Christmas lights went out and my loveliest of all Christmas trees returned to being an ordinary river oak again. 

Even though this Christmas tree was really lovely, its loveliness soon passed, and pales into insignificance compared to the beauty of that first Christmas gift on the first Christmas day, and its fulfilment later at Calvary. 

This gift lasts forever! Merry Christmas to you.

IAN PAGE

DURI