Bones fascinated our son from his childhood. I remember the day that began.
At three, after a bad case of whooping cough, he needed weeks of physiotherapy in the hospital clinic. After one of his sessions, I stood discussing his progress with the therapist. Tired of our talk, Anthony hopped off the low table and disappeared around the corner.
Seconds later, he dashed back into the room. "Mommy, come here!" He tugged my hand and demanded I follow. We flew down the corridor and rounded the corner. He pulled me into a small dark room, weirdly lit by the light from the hall.
Pointing straight ahead, trembling a tad, he shouted. "WHAT IS IT?"
My eyes followed his finger and met the vacant gaze of a life-sized skeleton. Gulping, I explained what it was, and that nurses and doctors used it to teach people about our bodies.
Our boisterous son remained quiet all day. The next morning he doodled with his breakfast, then put his spoon down firmly and looked me in the eye. "Mommy, when I'm off my bones, where am I going to be, and where are my bones going to be?"
Bones at breakfast. Every mother's dream.
The "after death, what?" question slices through history. Every major religion includes an afterlife belief. Humans have a built-in sense that we are each part of something much bigger and longer than our few years on earth. We long not to end at our finish lines.
And indeed we don't. Right over our cereal, I gave my child a crash course: Biblical Beliefs about Death 001.
"When people who love God and live for Jesus die, their spirits leave their bodies, honey. They don't need their old bones anymore. Jesus said we'll have new bodies in heaven.
He thought a moment. "But what happens to people who don't love God?"
Cornflakes almost shot out my nose. I should have expected our intuitive child to point out the elephant in the room, the one many Christians ignore.
I can't remember the exact words I used, but I told him what I learned as a child. That the Bible talks about hell, a lake of fire where Satan and his demons will get their due. And that though it makes God very sad, people who don't love and obey him will end up there too - by their own choice.
Now that I'm older, I believe fewer things than I once did, but the more firmly I believe those few. And I still believe that God, in love, allows us to choose what happens after our earthly finish lines.
I recently attended a funeral for someone with a known passion for God and Biblical truth. The officiate talked all around the elephant in the room. I left there thinking we need a skeleton at every final service. And a tiny child, to ask in a voice clear and innocent, "When I'm off my bones, where am I going to be...?"
