Who is God?

A long, long time ago, even before Grandpa was born, people didn't understand very much about the way the world works. But people were pretty smart, and they figured out real quick that if anything happened, somebody did it. For example, if a plate got broken, they could look around and find out who broke it. Or like when somebody left her doll in the living room the other day, mommy and daddy could figure out real easy who left it there! Remember?

But back in those days, a very long time before Grandpa was born, when it rained, and when there was thunder and lightning, the people couldn't find out who made it happen. And they tried real hard, too. But when they couldn't find anyone, they decided that it just had to have been somebody bigger than the whole world - bigger than the whole universe, maybe - who could make the sunshine and the rain and the thunder and the lightning and everything else.

They called this somebody "God." And whenever anything happened that the people couldn't understand, they would say "God did it!" and that made them all very happy. So the word God just means somebody bigger than the whole universe.

Today, now that you are here, people have learned a little bit more about the way the world works, and so we know about weather and sunshine and rain and thunder and lightning and clouds. So today, a great many people think we don't need to say "God did it" any more. Those people think that knowing how it all works means that nobody is making it work. But a lot of people, even me, still think that Somebody had to make it all and get it all organized and keep it all running. And we still call that Somebody "God."

Now, then. If the people way back in the beginning thought God was bigger than the whole world, then they must have thought He couldn't live here because the world would be much too small for him. But they wanted to give a name to the place where they thought God did live - and Heaven is the name of that place. Some people think Heaven has to be a much better place than this world just because God lives there.

And the reason we say people go to Heaven when they die is that we like to think they have gone to a better place than this world.