Q&A: How do you get to heaven (transport)?

Today I'm going to share a short answer to a question that one of our children asked. It said: “How do you get to heaven (transport)?”

I want to start with a true story. About Bucky, a black labrador. Bucky's owner, Mark, moved into a community in South Carolina, where he couldn't have a dog. So he brought Bucky to live with his father a few states away in Virginia. Almost immediately, Bucky ran away. He walked over 500 miles to get back home.

There are lots of stories like that. Dogs and cats that get lost and find their way back. Birds that fly halfway across the world and then return to the same feeder in your yard the next year. Something in them knows how to get home.

I think that's how it works with heaven.

In the bible, the disciple Thomas actually asks pretty much the same thing as our questioner. Jesus tells his friends, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” And Thomas says to Jesus, “We don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?” How can we know the way to somewhere we've never been?

And Jesus says, “I am the way. I'm going to prepare a place for you. And when it's ready I will come and get you, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

I've been in the room when humans and animals have died, and I never saw any cars, or planes, or hot air balloons taking them to heaven. So I don't really know exactly how we get there. But I believe that being with God is our true home, and that something in us – maybe the Jesus inside us – knows the way home.

That's my answer.

- Pastor Vince Amlin