Pigeons Get Justified Too

Reading: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Listening to: Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Wings

I’m going to ask a stupid question:  Have you ever read John 1:32 in Greek?

Well, I did yesterday in my Ancient Greek class.  What I found out?  The dove coming out of heaven and landing on Jesus can also be translated as being a pigeon.  Yes.  A pigeon descending on Christ. 
 
I totally love the image of a pigeon.  Pigeons are always shown as disgusting nuisances.  Think about George and the pigeons on Seinfeld ("Don't we have a deal with the pigeons?"  "Of course we have a deal. They get out of the way of our cars, we look the other way on the statue defecation.").  Or how about Franz Leibkind and his pigeon posse in The Producers (“He keeps boids. Dirty... disgusting... filthy... lice-ridden boids. You used to be able to sit out on the stoop like a person. Not anymore! No, sir! Boids!... You get my drift?”)?  Pigeons have a gross factor that puts them into sub groups along with cockroaches, mildew, and that loogie spat onto the sidewalk through which you will inevitably walk.
 
Here’s the kicker: God doesn’t see them that way.  To Him, pigeons are just as beautiful and handy as their more graceful cousin, the dove.  It doesn’t matter if it was a dove or a pigeon descending on Jesus, because God can use anything (and by extension, anybody) to bring His promise down.  That’s why He’s God!

Here’s the application:  Just because a person seems more like a dove than a pigeon doesn’t mean he or she is more righteous or loved than that pigeon over there.  In fact… remember the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector?  Which one of them went home justified?

Keep it real readers.  Doves, pigeons… in the end, they’re both just peristera.