Job was correctly convinced with the fact that all things on earth, including fish in the waters, tell of God’s ways to everyone who will listen.
The story of the salmon is a fascinating one. Its eggs are laid in the gravel bed of a cold mountain stream. When an egg hatches, the tiny salmon lives a few weeks on nourishment from the yolk sac to which it is attached. It finally frees itself from this sac and leaves its gravel bed to make a home in the stream. In Alaska, mosquitoes breed in great numbers. Their larvae, which the young fish finds in nearby pools, become its chief food.
After six months to a year in these waters, an inner urge causes the young salmon to swim toward the ocean. With hundreds and sometimes thousands of other young salmon, it begins its long trip to the ocean, swimming facing backwards (with its head into the current) wherever the stream is swift or there are rapids or waterfalls. By swimming facing upstream, it can control its movements and avoids drowning in the swift currents. How does it know to do this? God has given it that knowledge!
Following its long swim downstream, the young salmon leaves the fresh water and enters the salt water of the ocean. Few other species of fish can adapt to such a change. Scientists have found that the young salmon swim out hundreds to thousands of miles beyond the mouth of the river in which they were born. The salmon spends several years feeding hungrily on smaller sea creatures.
The mature salmon, weighing as much as 100 pounds, turns back toward the fresh water, returning to the mouth of the river where it first entered the ocean. It fights the current all the way to its exact birthplace. En route it must jump waterfalls ten feet high or higher, shelf by shelf, and covers 10 to 20 miles a day. Large numbers make the journey together, each leaving the group when it comes to the little stream where it was born.
At its final destination the female, with a swoop of her strong tail, makes a trench in the gravel bed where she lays thousands of eggs which are fertilized by the male. Then both of them, having finished their work, float down the current and die somewhere along the way. They have literally given their lives to provide life for others.
This makes us think of the One who gave His life that others might have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)).
Men marvel at the ways of this spectacular fish. God created it this way in the beginning, and ever since it has obediently followed God’s purposes. God wants obedience from us too, and when we do we have His promise, “In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:66In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. (Proverbs 3:6)).
JULY 13, 1997
ML-07/13/1997