"God... Jesus? Who are these people?"

What do you tell a three-year-old when a loved one dies? Erika Kirk had to face this question after the brutal public assassination of her husband Charlie Kirk, September 10, 2025. Erika described hugging their daughter Gigi who then asked the question of the hour, "Where’s daddy?"

Erika reflected about this moment, "How do you tell a three-year-old? She’s three.” I've heard a few critics of what she told her daughter. "Daddy loves you so much, baby" Erika replied, "he’s on a work trip with Jesus so he can afford your blueberry budget." 

Shame on the critics. Bless this grieving Christian mother, trying to console her daughter--and herself. My godly father died nineteen-years-ago (yesterday, September 21, would have been his ninety-second birthday; I stood at his grave and reflected on the day we buried him). My youngest son, who loved his grandfather dearly, was also, like Gigi, only three-years-old at the time. My little boy felt the loss very keenly and was loudly vocal about it at the graveside as they lowered my father's casket into the ground. "What are they doing with grandpa's body?" he yelled at the top of his three-year-old lungs. "I'll keep his body if they don't want it!"

A couple of days later, amidst all the planning for the funeral, and the numbness of my father's loss, I took Giles to the playground. He loved it when I gave him "under doggies" on the swing. But that day he was quieter than usual. Then, looking up at the clouds scudding by overhead, he yelled at the heavens, "God... Jesus? Who are these people?" Out of the mouths of babes.

Don't pretend that you have not had moments when you have wanted to shout that at the heavens. Job did. As someone who has a rather expensive blueberry habit myself, I can appreciate a grieving mother trying to shield her daughter from the harshest of realities in this fallen world, and remind her of something her father enjoyed with her.

What do you tell a three-year-old? Daddy's dead. A bad man shot him in the neck. He was assassinated. His body is at the morgue. We will put his body in a box and dig a hole and bury him in a few days. Would you like more blueberries, honey?

For now, I think Erika did just fine. In Scripture, monster death is called many things: being absent from the body, being in Paradise, being gathered to his people, giving up his spirit, breathing his last, putting off this tent, going down into silence, lying down with your fathers, departing, returning to dust. "He's on a work trip with Jesus." Jesus himself referred to death as sleep. No, I think Erika did just fine. Like my son Giles, Gigi has spent her first three years learning about God and Jesus every day, and will continue to know the LORD as she is nurtured by a grieving mother.

"God... Jesus? Who are these people?" Let us press on with childlike faith to know the LORD, to know and love the triune God who does all things well, who ordains great good out of what others intended for evil. The enemy has hugely overplayed his foul hand. As he's done so many times before. You'd think he'd have learned by now. The blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of the church. May a great host come savingly to know who God and Jesus are.

The enemy of God and his children (three-year-olds included) has been crushed; though he does his worst, he will be destroyed--and we will enter as little children into the glorious Kingdom of Heaven, as Charlie did.

Douglas Bond is author of more than thirty-five books (including imminently forthcoming INFANT HOLY INFANT LOWLY Advent Family Worship with the Carols of Christmas), leader of church history tours in Europe (Bond France Tour in 2026), editor, father of six, and doting grandfather of ten and counting.