It wasn't until I took catechism class at an Evangelical Free church in Columbus Nebraska, that I fully understood those words. But as a wee lad in Monticello, Kentucky, I quoted that very verse to another boy my own age.

He'd asked me about heaven and how to get there as we played in the verdent grass for which Kentucky is so famous. I suppose the Irish wanted the hills to look more like the carpeted County Cork of home and built their horse farms on the bluish green stuff. But Monicello wasn't horse country. Coal trains went through the tiny berg sandwiched between the foot hills of the Appilachians, a runoff creek passing through the neighborhoods.

Since my mother had already started my sister and I memorizing verses like that, I just blurted it out to my playmate. In my childish way, it was my first time to witness to another person, and we stood there should to shoulder as I led him in a faltering sinner's prayer. I don't remember his name and he disappeared months later when his family moved away. Still, the somewhat haunting memory of his quizzical face gives me wonder as to how the mind of a child reasons and his little heart sought salvation.

We can't get to heaven, no matter what age, except through Jesus. There are thousands of "belief" systems in the world, but only one with a risen Savior. What question are you asking of God?