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Philip Yancey grew up in a strict, fundamentalist church in the Deep South. At one point he jettisoned his faith but then warily returned to it. Now one of America's most popular Christian authors, he cut his journalistic teeth on our sister publication, Ignite Your Faith (then Campus Life) magazine. He served on its staff for 19 years, 5 of them as its editor. Philip still writes regularly for another sister publication, Christianity Today.

We occupy bodies of skin, bone, fat, and muscle on a material planet. But the apostle Paul reminds us that "our citizenship is in heaven" (Philippians 3:20).

Standing by a series of concrete fish ladders in Seattle one raw day, I learned a new word, smoltification, from a placard describing the life stages of a young river salmon.

After several months of solitary contentment as a bottom-dweller and jealous patroller of its modest territory, the fish takes a sudden interest in the larger world. One day it embarks on a journey far downstream, where a vast new world awaits it—the Pacific Ocean.

Scientists are just beginning to understand a whole complex of bodily changes that accompany this strange behavior. The fish becomes more streamlined, the color of its scales changes to silver, endocrine activity increases, and its gills adjust to allow for a greater tolerance of sodium and potassium. The salmon, a freshwater creature, is preparing to do something exceedingly rare: switch to a saltwater environment.

Adapted from Rumors of Another World (Zondervan, 2003) by permission.

Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Jesus, for glimpses of your divinity, with markers of your humanity retained, that preview life eternal for us.

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