Homing Instinct

Did you know that the Arctic Tern, that lives about seven degrees south of the North Pole, leaves its home every year and flies all the way to Antarctica and back -- some 23,000 miles in all.
I wonder WHY the bird does that…. Is it looking for a better place to live? Surely it must pass a LOT of good real estate between its home seven degrees south of the North Pole and Antarctica! Can't it find something suitable? Is Antarctica really that much better? Or, if it's getting a little warm, why doesn't the bird just fly up to the North Pole?
But that's not the point. The point is that the bird returns home -- home to its special place near the North Pole. It flies all that distance and returns to just the same spot it once left. I can hardly drive across town without getting lost -- how does it do it? Twenty three thousand miles! But somehow, the Arctic Tern possesses the ability to fly halfway around the globe and return home every year.

You know that the salmon leaves her little mountain stream as a fingerling and swims, perhaps hundreds of miles, to the ocean where she lives. Then, when it's time to lay eggs, she swims back to her place of birth. She somehow finds just the right river, and all of the correct tributaries and streams and creeks until she arrives home. It's the trip of a lifetime -- one she may not survive. But she presses on, somehow knowing just the right paths to take along the way.
Like the arctic tern, the salmon possesses a built-in ability to find her way home.

So it is with humans. Not in a physical sense, for many of us can't get anywhere without a map. But we have a built-in ability to successfully navigate the twists and turns of life. When we feel lost and confused about a path we should take or a decision to be made, those answers we need we usually possess -- deep inside. As we learn to be still and listen, we most often can find our way home again.

Dear God, please help me to accept the truth about myself today, no matter how beautiful it is.

Are you using your homing instinct?