WILL OUR PETS BE WITH US IN
HEAVEN?
All of us who love our
pets have probably asked the question, “Will they be with us in heaven?”
The best answer I’ve heard
is explained in a book I’m reading now, called Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer tells the story himself:
“At 11:00 a.m. there was a
knock at my door and a ten-year old boy came into my room with something I had requested
from his parents. I noticed that something was amiss with the boy, who is
usually cheerfulness personified. And soon it came out: he broke down in tears,
completely beside himself, and I could hear only the words: ‘Herr Wolf ist tot’ [Mr. Wolf is dead],
and then he cried and cried. ‘But who is Herr Wolf?’
As it turns out, it is a
young German shepherd dog that was sick for eight days and had just died a
half-hour ago. So the boy, inconsolable, sat down on my knee and could hardly
regain his composure; he told me how the dog died and how everything is lost
now. He played only with the dog, each morning the dog came to the boy’s bed
and awakened him—and now the dog was dead. What could I say?
So he talked to me about
it for quite a while. Then suddenly his wrenching crying became quiet and he
said: ‘But I know he’s not dead at all.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘His spirit is now
in heaven.’
So there I stood and was
supposed to answer him yes or no. If I said ‘no, we don’t know’ that would have
meant ‘no.’ . . . So I quickly made up my mind and said to him: ‘Look, God created human beings and also
animals, and I’m sure he also loves animals. And I believe that with God it is
such that all who loved each other on earth—genuinely loved each other—will remain
together with God, for to love is part of God. Just how that happens, though,
we admittedly don’t know.’
You should have seen the
happy face on this boy; he had completely stopped crying. ‘So then I’ll see Herr
Wolf again when I am dead; then we can play together again’—in a word, he was
ecstatic. I repeated to him a couple of times that we don’t really know how
this happens. He, however, knew, and
knew it quite definitely in thought.
After a few minutes, he
said: ‘Today I really scolded Adam and Eve; if they had not eaten the apple,
Herr Wolf would not have died.’”
I thought that was a great
story and Bonhoeffer’s answer about genuine love and that God is love, was an
awesome way to explain what we believe about our pets being in heaven with us.
Love, Carolyn
My books are available on:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=aps&keywords=WINGS%20Carolyn%20molica&linkCode=ur2&tag=jmbcsds-20&linkId=XQMVLVZYNBLYAGEM
If you’d
prefer a word doc or a pdf file to download, let me know at cjmolica@hotmail.com
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