It’s not just a question that children ask. It’s a universal question—one that anyone who thinks about God contemplates from time to time. Where does God live?

When TLU theology professor Dr. Carl Hughes’s three-year-old son asked him that question one night before bed, it stumped him.

“One thing I was surprised by as a father was how quickly my son started asking earnest theological questions,” Hughes says. “It seemed like just weeks after he was speaking that he was asking me things I didn’t know how to answer—things that made me smile and that also seemed profound.”

Things like, “How can God love us when God doesn’t give hugs?” Or: “Is God funny?”

“I still don’t know how to answer those questions,” Hughes admits. “One evening I remember I was putting him to bed and he asked me very seriously ‘So where does God live?’ Before I could even try to answer, he said, ‘Because I know God doesn’t live in this house—I don’t see God anywhere.’ Honestly, I had a moment of panic when he said that. I teach theology for a living, and I don’t even know how to begin to answer his questions! I wrote this little book as an effort to try to give a better answer.”

And so, the journey of creating a book about God’s whereabouts began. Knowing that he would need an exceptional illustrator for the project, Hughes sought advice from TLU Art Department Chair Professor Kyle Olson. Recent TLU grad Dalton Smith (’21) was at the top of Olson’s list. Smith is currently finishing up his MFA in Sequential Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Although Hughes hadn’t known Smith when he was a student at TLU, he got in touch, and Smith took on the job. “Dalton Smith did an amazing job,” says Hughes. “He turned out to be a perfect fit. I am thrilled with the creativity and insight of his illustrations.”

The two had some profound conversations about theology and brainstormed how the illustrations would complement Hughes’s manuscript. “The illustrations he created are beyond anything I would have imagined myself,” says Hughes. “Often, I came to see what I was trying to say in a new light as a result of these images. People who read the book almost always comment on how much they like the illustrations.”

Smith’s illustrations are profound in their simplicity, and if the reader looks carefully, they will find a little mouse in each one. “I think kids really gravitate toward characters, especially animals—or at least that’s how I always was!” says Smith. “So I thought a little ‘I Spy’ would be fun and engaging. I also think mice are a good, relatable animal choice when considering the kiddos because the world is so big and we’re so small, especially given that this book is about God and his vastness, right? And of course, since the character is a mouse, it’s easy to fit the little dude anywhere on the page and not be too distracting of the story and the message.” Smith says Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon was one of his favorite books growing up, and he took inspiration from that as well.

From the beginning, Hughes set out to create something special—something set apart from other children’s books about God. “Obviously, there are a million Christian children’s books out there,” he says. “I’ve found some good ones. But often the books I’d come across just didn’t feel authentic to who I am and what I would like to pass on.”

Hughes found that some of the books on the market came off as a bit trite, or that they seemed to be working toward getting kids to stop asking questions—rather than the opposite. “Just because a book is addressed to small children, I don’t think it should encourage them to think about God in a small-minded way,” says Hughes. “I want my kids to know that God is bigger than any of the boxes we try to put God in. At the same time, I want them to know that they are a child of God at the deepest level of who they are. I want to encourage them to share that divine spark with the world.”

And he also wants children to recognize that God is for everyone, and that it’s okay that people approach God by different paths. “I want my kids to know that God wants us to love all people, especially people very different from ourselves.”

Although Hughes doesn’t have immediate plans to write another children’s book, he isn’t ruling it out. “Before this project came along, I would never in a million years have imagined myself writing a children’s book at all.”

Let’s hope his own children keep asking questions.

Get your copy of Where God Lives—a book not only for children but for the child within each of us—by clicking the link.

Where God Lives: Hughes, Carl, Smith, Dalton: 9798992466409: Amazon.com: Books