I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 12th of April, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of John 1:32:

”And John bore witness, saying, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him.” 

The Holy Spirit coming down from heaven in the form of a dove and settling upon Jesus Christ. Oh, what a beautiful picture!

Early this morning, it was still very dark and misty, we’re having beautiful rain on the farm at the moment. I walked out of my house and into the prayer room, and in the shadow I saw a beautiful pair of turtle doves. There was such a peace about that picture, and you know they say that a turtle dove only mates once in his life. So if you kill his partner, he remains alone for the rest of his life.

I looked up the meaning of the word turtle dove and its characteristics, and it says he is a harmless bird. He represents innocence, powerlessness, meekness and humility. Don’t we need that in the world today, my dear friend? The sign of peace is the turtle dove.

I remember like yesterday, as a very young man when we had just arrived on the farm, Shalom, I was just about to have my breakfast in the morning, in those days we had the old phone that you had to crank the handle and there were two signs, two shorts, one long, that was your call sign. The phone rang and I picked it up and it was the Deeds Office in Pretoria saying, “You have to give us the name of your new farm that you have just bought”, and I had no idea what we were going to call this farm. So I shouted through to the bedroom, Jill was doing something in the bedroom. I said, ”Jill, we need a name. We need a name for the farm.” And she shouted back, ”Shalom.” Well that’s the name of this farm. Now Shalom means peace in Hebrew and of course the Prince of Peace is often represented by the Holy Spirit. 

I want to say to you today, let us go out and when people are aggressive and when people are fearful and when people are ugly, let us represent the Holy Spirit. Let there be peace in our hearts. Oft times people come to Shalom to visit us and as we greet them, sometimes they burst into tears and we say, ”Why are you crying?” They say, ”We don’t know why we are crying,” and I’m hoping that they also can feel the peace of Jesus Christ in this place.

Today, let’s go out and represent the Prince of Peace, the soon coming King, Jesus Christ. 

God bless you and goodbye.