Doves

Doves have been a potent symbol of peace ever since one brought an olive branch back to Noah to show that the flood was over and that plants were growing on the land again.
This represented the re-establishment of peace between God and man but the same symbol has been used down through the ages to represent peace between any warring parties and we still talk about offering an 'olive branch' to those with whom we have been in conflict.

An olive branch? Wait just a minute: A leaf, maybe or a twig at a stretch but a branch? That had to be one big dove and I think that it might well have been interpreted as an incoming fighter jet rather than a harbinger of peace.

None the less, the dove symbol endures and it is used again in the New Testament to represent the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Godhead who is given to believers as the indwelling, empowering presence of God. This springs from Jesus own baptism where, it is said, ' heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in the form of a dove.' The Jewish people present would not have missed the earlier reference and would have associated Jesus with Noah as a saviour of mankind.

Having been involved for a number of years in contemporary Christian churches, it was inevitable that I would find myself producing the odd dove but, with the price of silver at its current crazy level, not one of a size that could carry an olive branch.