One Sunday morning as I was making a last minute dash to the bathroom before putting on my clergy robes for worship, a mother and her young daughter stopped me in the hall. “Caroline has a question for you,” the mother said, so I knelt next to the little girl to hear what it might be. The child became shy, so the mom asked for her: “Caroline wants to know if God is a boy or a girl.”

I gulped down the remainder of my doughnut hole. I only had about 30 seconds to answer before worship began (and I think I was preaching that day and I needed to be on time). So I gave a rather lame answer: “That’s a very good question! Let me think about that and get back to you.” I didn’t want to just say, “God is not a boy or a girl” without explaining in a thoughtful way.

Caroline’s question got me thinking. How do we explain God to very young children? Later, I turned to the Bible to see the various ways in which God was described. I pondered other questions a young child might ask about God, questions my own children, as well as those in the church family, had asked me at one time or another.

The first part of the book became a list of questions children ask about God:

I can’t see you, God, so please give me a clue – Do you look like me and do I look like you?

Are you big or little, are you short or tall? Can you really see me when I am so small?

Then, I made a transition by pointing the reader to the Bible for answers.

“You’re looking for answers? Then here is a clue:

Just look to the Bible to see what is true,

And listen to everything I say to you.”

Using a first-person voice as if God is speaking to the child, next came the answers, all based on Bible verses:

“I’m as tall as the heavens, I’m as wide as the sea,

Yet even your hairs are all counted by me.”

I had so much fun finding verses, and writing questions and answers in verse, and putting it all together into one long, cohesive answer to little Caroline’s question.

The first editor I sent this to turned it down, but eventually, the book was accepted by Tyndale House Publishers, my first book after 4 years of trying and over 250 rejections. 17 years after it was first published, the book is still in print, and has been translated into 17 languages.

The child whose question inspired me to write the book is now long grown up. I am grateful that she and her mother stopped me on that busy church morning, and really made me think about how to talk to a child about God.

What are the stories behind your books?

Kathy