Thank you for supporting Peace Devotions with your prayers and by sharing it with others.
If you’d like to help us make more devotions, you can donate to the Peace Devotions fund.
Salmon Run
Genesis 1:20-22, John 14:3-6
Genesis chapter one, verses 20 through 22
And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” (Genesis 1:20-22)
Hi there, I’m Pastor Tony Pittenger. I’m a pastor out at Bethany Lutheran Church in Port Orchard, Washington. One of the neat things living out in the Pacific Northwest is the salmon run. It’s the time of the year, usually summer, starts in Alaska in the summer, but for us, it’s really fall when the salmon returned to their streams to spawn. That is, to either lay eggs or fertilized eggs for the next generation. It is an amazing thing.
Nowadays we’ve got phones in our pockets, or we’ve got something on our wrist that tracks our steps. How many steps do you do in a day? Set goals like maybe 10,000 steps. So I started doing some digging. Salmon travel, swim, an average of 18 miles a day, and during the spawning season they can double that 34 miles a day. What’s amazing about them, though, is that they return from swimming miles and miles, thousands of miles in their lifetime. They return to the very same stream where they hatched as an egg. Even they find the very same spot within about a foot or two. They go back right there to lay a new generation of eggs, or to fertilize that new generation.
Absolutely amazing. Do you know where you were born? Do you know what hospital you were born in? Do you know what room of the hospital you were born in? How do the salmon do it? Some of them travel all the way to Montana. I mean, they travel past Washington and Oregon, through Idaho, all the way into Montana to spawn. How do they do it? Well, God’s created them to do just that. For some reason, in his divine wisdom, he has them returning those thousands of miles to the place where they were born.
Jesus was talking to his disciples once in John chapter 14. He says,
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:3-6)
So if you can’t imagine finding your way back up a stream to the very same spot, or if you don’t even know exactly which hospital or which hospital room you were born in, how could we possibly know how to get to heaven? We’ve never even been there. Well, Jesus assures Thomas, he assures the rest of us that he knows the way, that he is, the way through him, through what he’s done for us, his life, his death, his resurrection. That’s the way. That’s how we will one day find ourselves at home, at that place prepared for us, prepared for you. We’ll find ourselves there because of our Savior and what he’s done for us. And for that, we not only marvel like we marvel at the salmon and their spawning and their return to their home. But for that promise of our home in heaven, we give thanks to God through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
