Taking Flight

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Lynn

I suppose with the last name of “Dove” there are always a lot of “bird analogies” that tend to go along with the name.  Being a “Dove”, people just naturally assume that we are a peaceful lot (an olive twig tucked safely away somewhere on our person), or they joke we live in a nest rather than in a house.  We “coo” rather than talk normally.  We fly away rather than run.  Truly I’ve heard them all.  A friend brought the whole bird analogy to a whole new low when he said, “How can you (Doves) fly like eagles, when you’re surrounded by turkeys!”  I’m sure he was jokingly maligning all doves, eagles and turkeys everywhere in one fell swoop (get it?)

Anyway, I have embraced the name I married into and now have adopted it as my own.  I have collections of  Dove figurines all around my home.  I decided to use my married name rather than use my maiden name or a pen name when I wrote and published my books, The Wounded Trilogy.  I love my last name!  I took on the name nearly 36 years ago when Charles and I were married so when you think about it I have been a “Dove” a lot longer than I was ever a “Jorgensen” (which is my maiden name).  There is a rich heritage that goes along with both the Dove and Jorgensen names but for now I’ll comment on the Doves.

My sister-in-law has been working on an ancestry search of all the Doves in the family, and she has discovered a rich history in the Dove name.  The book, “Building in the Blood – The Story of Dove Brothers of Islington 1781-1981” by David Braithwaite (Godfrey Cave Associates Limited, London, 1981), tells the story of a family of builders who, “responding to particular needs enjoyed success in boom years and depressions alike, survived two world wars and today continue their unique role in an industry both transformed and transforming.”  It is thought that my husband’s family is descended from one of these early Doves named in that book who, not surprisingly spent much of their lives building churches to God’s glory.  (It should be noted that MY husband Charles, has been involved in two church building projects since we have been married so it must be in his blood!)

My father-in-law, Charles Dixon Dove lived in Speers, Saskatchewan most of his young life.  His father (William D. Dove) came to Canada in 1907 when his parents (Benjamin D. and Anne Mary Dove) moved from Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands in England) and settled on a homestead northeast of Speers.*   We have pictures of Benjamin and Anne, antique photos in antique frames, hanging in our diningroom.  Benjamin appears to be a jovial man, with a classic moustache and a twinkle in his eye that hints of mischief.  Anne, on the other hand, is serious and a little surly looking in her picture.  My husband winks at me that he occasionally likes to go past her picture and crack a joke to see if he can get any kind of a reaction from her…he has definitely inherited Benjamin’s twinkle and mischief!  It is likely that Benjamin is related to one of those Doves mentioned in the Braithwaite book and it is no wonder that most of those Doves then and the Doves of today carry the given or middle names of William, Charles, Spencer, Edward, and/or Dixon that seem to be the most common names of boys in this Dove line.  My father in law, named Charles Dixon Dove, MY husband, Charles William Edward Dove, our nephew is named Spencer, and our son is named Brett Charles.  The given names indicate the legacy that defines us as a family and acknowledges the history behind the last name “Dove”.  *”Along the Carlton Trail – A History of Speers” Published by the Ottawa-Speers History Book Committee (p.123)

My son, Brett, shares his birthday with his great Grandfather, William D. who was born on November 22, 1894.  In God’s plan, Brett was born to be adopted into the Dove family 98 years later.  Brett carries on the Dove name and along with it he embraces the legacy and history behind the name.  Brett, has embraced the Dove name but has defined it in his own personal way as well.  God has a specific plan and purpose in mind for Brett, just like all the Dove men before him, Brett’s life is grounded in faith.

It is perhaps a parent’s greatest happiness and greatest sadness at the same time to “let go” of their children.  When it comes to my son and my two girls, bird analogies seem appropriate.  They have each taken wing and are flying high.  Too much?  I’ll let the bird analogies go… for now.

 

turtle-doves

Through skillful and godly Wisdom is a house (a life, a home, a family) built, and by understanding it is established [on a sound and good foundation], and by knowledge shall its chambers [of every area] be filled with all precious and pleasant riches.  Proverbs 24:3-4

 

 

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#JesuisCharlie – Je suis, Charlie!

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Lynn

“As a writer, blogger and yes, I do occasionally post cartoons on my blog, it’s hard to watch the events in France without feeling a personal image_adapt_960_highconnection.  I take censorship VERY seriously.  I may not agree with what others say but I will defend their right to say it.

People have the right to speak freely in this world without fearing for their lives if they say something that goes against government policies or religious sensibilities. I openly confess to the world that I am a Christ-follower.  That may offend some people.  Others may applaud that declaration.  People may not agree with the blog postings here on Journey Thoughts that espouse Christian values and world views, if so they may choose to not “follow” my blog and never read it again.  No hard feelings.  We can choose to agree or disagree, but we BOTH have the right to make our choice.  I will defend that right!

Any artist (writer, painter, sculptor, actor, cartoonist etc.) should be able to freely express themselves without fear of retribution.  Again, I may not agree with their means of expression – it may go against my conservative Christian sensibilities, but I will defend their rights to express themselves.

I cringe when I see my Lord Jesus, maligned in the media, or have people share blasphemous literature and pictures in social media about the God Whom I serve.  I can voice my discontent at their blasé attitude towards the God of the Universe, but I am NOT their judge or jury so I will never pick up an automatic weapon and storm a magazine that prints derogatory cartoons or articles I find offensive.  That kind of behaviour goes against EVERYTHING a Christian stands for.  Just as I have the right to share my Christian values openly, others have the right to disagree with them.  Neither one of us have the right to kill and torture and manipulate by fear those who have a different opinion.

I am saddened that there are misguided souls who feel they need to defend their god with senseless and merciless violence.  These people may use religious fervour as an excuse for their actions but they are in fact misdirected, deranged and cold-blooded killers.  They will be judged in heaven and on earth.

So today I stand alongside all of those who raised their pens in the air last night, those in Paris and around the world who believe that the pen IS mightier than the sword.

“Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.”  Amos 5:14-15

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New Year’s Resolutions for Teens

Posted on January 1, 2015 by Lynn

NewYearsResolutions2I will return back to the classroom in a few days after the Christmas break and this will be the very first devotion I want to do with my students.  I will ask them:

How many of you have made New Year’s Resolutions this year?

How many of you have already broken your New Year’s Resolutions…be honest.

I’ll be honest, usually within one week into the New Year I’ve already broken all my resolutions.  In fact I can’t even say I broke them…I can’t say I’ve even started on them!  The New Year will come and go and despite all my good intentions I will have failed before I’ve even started!

A dog will probably do better with his New Year’s resolutions than me.  A dog’s resolutions might be something like these:

  1. I will not play tug-of-war with my human’s underwear when he’s on the toilet.
  2. I do not need to suddenly stand straight up when I’m lying under the coffee table.
  3. I will not roll my toys behind the fridge.
  4. I will not throw up in the car.
  5. I will not roll on dead seagulls, fish, crabs, etc.
  6. I will not lick my human’s face after eating “Kitty Litter Box Crunchies”
  7. I will remember that the diaper pail is not a cookie jar.
  8. I will not chew my human’s toothbrush and not tell them.
  9. I will not bark each time I hear a door bell on T.V.
  10. I will not chew crayons or pens, especially not the red ones, or my people will think I am hemorrhaging.
  11. I will remember that my head does not belong in the refrigerator.
  12. I will not bite the officer’s hand when he reaches in for my human’s driver’s license and car registration.

Being equal opportunity how about a cat’s resolutions for the New Year:

  • If my human will never let me eat her pet hamster, I am at peace with that.
  • I will not slurp fish food from the surface of the aquarium.
  • I will not eat large numbers of assorted bugs, then come home and puke them up so the humans can see that I’m getting plenty of roughage.
  • I will not lean way over to drink out of the tub, fall in, and then pelt right for the box of clumping cat litter. (It took FOREVER to get the stuff out of my fur.)
  • I will not use the bathtub to store live mice for late-night snacks.
  • I will not perch on my human’s chest in the middle of the night and stare into her eyes until she wakes up.
  • I will try to remember that I cannot leap through closed windows to catch birds outside. If I forget this and bonk my head on the window and fall behind the couch in my attempt, I will not get up and do the same thing again.
  • I will not assume the patio door is open when I race outside to chase leaves.
  • I will not stick my paw into any container to see if there is something in it. If I do, I will not hiss and scratch when my human has to shave me to get the rubber cement out of my fur.
  • I will remember that if I bite the cactus, it will bite back.
  • I will not play “dead cat on the stairs” while people are trying to bring in groceries or laundry, or else one of these days, it will really come true.
  • I will not swat my human’s head repeatedly when she’s on the family room floor trying to do sit ups.
  • When the humans play darts, I will not leap into the air and attempt to catch them.

Ok, seriously….

Did you know that 40 – 45 % of adults make one or more resolutions a year?

Any idea what kind of resolutions top out the lists?

1.   Lose weight

2.   Exercise more

3.  Stop Smoking

Here are the stats for how many of these resolutions are maintained as time goes on:

–          past the first week (75%)

–          past 2 weeks (71%)

–          after one month (64%)

–          after 6 months (46%)  That means less than half of the people who make resolutions actually follow through with them a half a year later…

And then they make the SAME resolution the next year, only this time because the person knew it would be tough to follow through they change it slightly to make it easier to keep:

I read this recently from someone who was trying to lose weight:

In 2007 their New Year’s Resolution was: I will get my weight down below 180.
2008: I will watch my calories until I get below 190.
2009: I will follow my new diet religiously until I get below 200.
2010: I will try to develop a realistic attitude about my weight.
2011: I will work out 5 days a week.
2012: I will work out 3 days a week.
2013: I will try to drive past a gym at least once a week.

So why do we even bother to make resolutions?

While a lot of people who make resolutions do break them, research shows that making a resolution is useful.

For thousands of years, in many civilizations from the Sumerians to the Romans, people have wanted to start the New Year off on the right foot.  Symbolically speaking, January 1st is a powerful time to ask important questions about one’s life and in particular if you’re happy with the direction it’s going.

One desires change. When the struggle to keep the resolution becomes a challenge, one needs to remember why one made this promise in the first place.

The reason is that we want to see ourselves in a different place at the end of the year (and beyond!) than we were at the beginning.

There is actually a guy online who has made up a foolproof worksheet on how to pick New Year’s resolutions that you will actually keep.

First you list 5 – 10 resolutions

Then you cross off the ones you’ve tried before, but ditched before Jan. 15.

Then you cross of the ones you’re doing for your friends/Mom or Dad (you know what I’m talking about, things like I will keep my room neat or else my Mom will ground me…)  Peer pressure stuff.

Next you cross off the ones that the T.V. commercials have guilted you into doing.  (I will buy face wash stuff to fight my zits because Adam Levine uses it and he’s dreamy….)

Now you cross off the ones that your heart is not really into.

And lastly you cross off any others that are variable on your mood, hormones, or the amount of energy drinks you’ve consumed…

Now, if everything on your list is crossed out, perhaps this is a good indicator you shouldn’t make resolutions without asking for some guidance.  My guess is, if your resolutions were more about honouring God and becoming more like HIM, you wouldn’t be crossing off those kinds of resolutions!

For the Christian, the New Year’s celebration should include reflection on how to improve one’s personal relationship with God.  Do you know what the top resolutions are for a Christian?:

Your resolutions might be something like:

1.  I will read my Bible every day

2.  I will pray every day.

3.  I will attend church every Sunday.

(For the first week, you’ve been diligent, you’ve prayed, read your Bible and you were in church.  Whoo Hoo!  But then you started school and your Language Arts teacher just assigned a novel study.  All of a sudden you’re too busy reading a Shakespearean novel to read your Bible.  Your friends invited you to go skiing last Sunday, so you missed church.  You woke up late, hardly had time to eat breakfast before you rushed out the door to school, and then your math teacher assigned you twenty-three pages of math for homework and by the time you got it all done that night you were just too tired to do anything else but go to bed.  No bedtime prayers that night.

See how easily we can become distracted…we have all good intentions but it is so hard to follow through when we rely solely on OUR strength.

Many Christians make New Year’s resolutions to pray more, to read the Bible every day, and to attend church more regularly. These are fantastic goals. However, these New Year’s resolutions fail just as often as the non-spiritual resolutions, because there is no power in a New Year’s resolution. Resolving to start or stop doing a certain activity has no value unless you have the proper motivation for stopping or starting that activity. For example, why do you want to read the Bible every day? Is it to honor God and grow spiritually, or is it because you have just heard that it is a good thing to do?

Why do you want to lose weight? Is it to honor God with your body, or is it for vanity, to honor yourself?

Philippians 4:13 tells us, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength.” John 15:5 declares, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

If God is the center of your New Year’s resolution, it has chance for success, depending on your commitment to it. If it is God’s will for something to be fulfilled, He will enable you to fulfill it. If a resolution is not God honoring and/or is not in agreement in God’s Word, we will not receive God’s help in fulfilling the resolution.

So, what sort of New Year’s resolution should a Christian make? Here are some suggestions: (1) Pray to the Lord for wisdom (James 1:5) in regards to what resolutions, if any, He would have you make; (2) Pray for wisdom as to how to fulfill the goals God gives you; (3) Rely on God’s strength to help you; (4) Find an accountability partner who will help you and encourage you; (5) Don’t become discouraged with occasional failures; instead allow them to motivate you further; (6) Don’t become proud or vain, but give God the glory. Psalm 37:5-6, “Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”

The youth at our church are challenged yearly on how they can become “legendary for Christ.”

There is a huge difference in what makes a person legendary in the world’s eyes than what makes a person legendary in God’s eyes.

The world looks at sportstars, actresses and actors, and singers as legendary perhaps.  They have celebrity status and influence and money.  I suppose according to the world’s standards they are pretty legendary.  However, God does not look at the same things the world does when He determines what is legendary.

God looks at the heart of a person.  God looks at how someone thinks more highly of others than he does himself.  God looks at someone who is obedient and willing to do whatever God asks of him.

God looks at someone as legendary if they forgive someone who has wronged them.  God isn’t looking for perfect people, He is looking for people who willingly submit to Him and try to do their best in every circumstance so that they don’t get the glory but so God does.

Do you want to be legendary this year?  May I suggest the following resolutions for you to consider?

1. I will put God first in all areas of my life.

2. I will not worship idols.

3. I will not use the Lord’s name unless it brings Him glory and honor.

4. I will set Sundays apart as a special day.

5. I will treat my Father and Mother with respect.

6. I will not commit murder.  (That seems pretty obvious, but this is not just “murder” physically but “murder” psychologically…it means not gossiping, or bullying, or doing anything that tears another person down.  Believe it or not, there are kids that are taking their own lives because they have been so traumatized by bullying.  If you bully…you may be an accessory to murder.)

7. I will not cheat on my spouse by having an affair.  (Ok, that applies to your teachers…but I’m going to shorten this one for you…DO NOT CHEAT…it will be exam time in a few weeks, the devil waves a temptation in front of you every time you write a test…”to cheat or not to cheat”.  Don’t listen to the devil.)

8. I will not take anything that belongs to someone else.

9. I will keep my tongue bridled and tell no lies. (Spreading lies and gossip is wrong.  Don’t do it.)

10. I will not harbor desire for the things other people have.  (It means you won’t be envious or jealous of someone else.  It implies you are thankful and content with what you have.)

You’ve probably guessed that these resolutions are directly from scripture: The 10 Commandments.

Great Resolutions to ensure a great year ahead!

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