Kitty Goes to Heaven?
© 1999 Don Rogers
My third grade Sunday School teacher, Miss Judy, was the perfect person to ask, I thought, because she was my friend. For years she was the one who called me up on my birthday and sang "Happy Birthday" to me. This was extra special because I didn't have parties. My birthday was near Christmas and my mother said it would be an imposition on people to expect them to come to a party at that time of the year.
I needed to ask my teacher about my kitty. I had a kitten and it died. I know it died. But my grandmother went to church and prayed about it and the next day that kitten was alive drinking milk. But that "miracle" was not my question for Miss Judy. I was worried about what would have happened to my kitty if she had died - where would she go? Would she go to heaven?
The next Sunday, surely without any relation to the lesson for the day, I asked Miss Judy if my kitten would go to heaven when she died. I am not sure just what her words were but it was to the effect that there is a place in heaven for everyone and everything, but that animals might be in a different place because they didn't have souls.
I was devastated. My kitten did not have a soul! I worried about that a lot. But at the same time it was the first time I think I realized I did have a soul, there was a place for me in God's heaven, that I was connected to God.
Looking back I think that may have been the first time I had a sense of God that led to my call to ministry - the answer Miss Judy gave, that I didn't like, got me to thinking about myself, my soul and my relationship to God.