Find The Way Home

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 3:20

Every year Pacific salmon, having lived five to six years in the ocean, suddenly get the urge to return to the headwaters of their birth river. Battling fishermen, bears, and giant hydroelectric dams, the fish fight their way upstream, determined to reach their home.

Scientists don’t know how the salmon make their way back to the exact river in which they were born after being in the ocean for several years. Some think they can taste or smell the fresh water from their river. Others think they may use the stars to navigate. However they do it, we know they don’t use charts and compasses; their journey is intuitive. They have a longing for a particular river that isn’t satisfied until they find it.

And that’s exactly how it is with us. God created us for heaven, and nothing in this earthly life can satisfy our longing (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We should be like salmon—being in the ocean but not being of the ocean, not being at rest until we find our way home to heaven.

If fish know when they’re home and when they’re not, how much more intense is that knowledge in those who bear God’s image?