A Beautiful Storybook to Help Our Kids Understand Life After Death

This article was first published in French at TPSG.

Life beyond the grave holds great mystery to most people. But it shouldn’t for the believer. Or at least not entirely. The Bible has much to tell us about what awaits us beyond this mortal life, and who better to teach our children and us than Joni Erickson Tada. If you are not familiar with her testimony, I highly recommend her autobiography Joni, in which she recounts the events preceding and following a diving accident at age 17 that left her paraplegic. 

With beauty and simplicity, Joni gives a mini-course on eschatology (what the Bible teaches about last things) destined to fill readers young and old with great hope. For we will not be simply disembodied spirits, floating on clouds, playing harps. We will be glorified versions of ourselves, with healthy and whole bodies. 

To give these theological truths life, Catalina Echeverri offers her usual quality of drawings that engage young readers and spark their imagination. The wheelchair-bound woman: Free! The boy on crutches: Lame no more! The blind: He sees! The deaf: She hears! We all may not suffer from such outwardly physical afflictions, but we all experience pain of some sort in this world. And the promise of Scripture and of this precious little book is this: When this life ends, we'll get to party in heaven forever! Hallelujah!

And that’s not all! The most precious promise of this awesome super fantastic forever party is that we’ll be with Jesus, worshipping him alongside all the friends he invited to his party! What better way to spend eternity than getting to know and love Jesus more, and doing so in the company of our family in Christ. This book makes an excellent gift on any occasion, but perhaps especially following the homegoing of a child’s cherished loved one.