Questions About Heaven

My kids, ages 4 and 6, frequently start up conversations about heaven and what it will be like. They ask lots of questions -some of which I don’t know the answers.  For example, they ask about our cat who died a year ago “Will we see Rocky when we get there?” Or they’ll ask about our current pets ” Are Sammy and Xenie going to go too?” They also ask ” Is it up in the sky? How are we going to get there?”  And no matter what I say it always seems to end with my 6 year old saying ” I don’t want to go there. I will miss our house/cats/whatever else”.  He seems very anxious and scared about it and I was just wondering, what is the appropriate way to talk about heaven with young children and what is the best way to answer questions I don’t really know the answers to?

The best way to answer questions when you don’t really know the answer is to say, “I don’t really know the answer to that.”  This is actually a great lesson in faith for your children.  The truth is that our minds can never comprehend all there is to know about God—and there are many things we won’t know until we are in Heaven ourselves.  It is fine to say, “I don’t know”, but then you want to say what you DO know.  For example, we DO know that God created and cares about animals (Genesis 1:24-25 and Matthew 10:29).  Read these verses with your children and say that you are sure God has a plan to take care of the pets, but you are not sure whether you will see them in Heaven or not.  Follow the same plan with the Heaven discussions.  Talk about what we DO know based on scripture.  For example, you can use John 14:2-3 and Matthew 6:19-20 to open up discussions about Heaven.  Of course your children don’t want to go to Heaven yet.  They don’t want to be separated from you.  You can help them know Heaven is a real and wonderful place, but you can also reassure them that you think God planned for most children to stay with their parents on earth.  Again, you don’t know enough to promise them how long their earthly lives will be, but you do know enough to reassure them that God will always take care of them.  These are very normal questions they are asking, and it gives you a wonderful chance to build their understanding of God’s character.