I was in Milton Keynes on Friday; meeting with a potential guest speaker for our Church weekend away in the autumn of 2011. We were chatting away; I had just mentioned that the peace of Jesus was to be a major theme this morning, and at that moment we noticed that outside there was a flock of doves circling just to the side of the house. The potential significance wasn’t lost on me because at the baptism of Jesus the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove; and of course we associate a dove with peace. This flock (if that’s the right word) were flying together, soaring upwards together, swooping low together, and every so often settling on the roof of a house together. They weren’t precisely in unison, some were a little awry, but they were unmistakeably together.
We are called to ‘shalom’, peace, togetherness, unity, common purpose; a common mind.