Bonhoeffer on Children's Spiritual Capacity

My husband, Pete and I were listening to the audio book by Eric Metaxas on Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who is to me both one of the men of greatest Christian integrity and one of my favorite
theologians of the twentieth century.  He shared a vignette which prompted me to find the book so I could capture and share it.  It needs no further introduction or conclusion from me:

Today I encountered a completely unique case in my pastoral counseling, which I'd like to recount to you briefly and which despite its simplicity really made me think. At 11:00 a.m. there was a knock at my door and a ten-year-old boy came into my room with something I had requested from his parents. I noticed that something was amiss with the boy, who is usually cheerfulness personified. And soon it came out: he broke down in tears, completely beside himself, and I could hear only the words: "Herr Wolf ist tod" [Mr. Wolf is dead.], and then he cried and cried.

"But who is Herr Wolf?" As it turns out it is a young German shepherd dog that was sick for eight days and had just died a half-hour ago. So the boy, inconsolable, sat down on my knee and could hardly regain his composure; he told me how the dog had died and how everything is lost now. He played only with the dog, each morning the dog came to the boys bed and awakened him—and now the dog was dead. What could I say? So he talked to me about it for quite a while.

Then suddenly his wrenching crying became very quiet and he said: "But I know he's not dead at all."

"What do you mean?"

"His spirit is now in heaven, where it is happy. Once in a class a boy asked the religion teacher what heaven was like, and she said she had not been there yet; but tell me now, will I see Herr Wolf again? He's certainly in heaven."

So there I stood and was supposed to answer him yes or no. If I said, "no, we don't know" that would have meant, "no."…So I quickly made up my mind and said to him: "Look, God created human beings and also animals, and I'm sure he also loves animals. And I believe that with God it is such that all who loved each other on earth—genuinely loved each other—will remain together with God, for to love is part of God. Just how that happens though we admittedly don't know."

You should have seen the happy face on this boy; he had completely stopped crying. "So then I'll see Herr Wolf again when I am dead; then we can play together again"—in a word he was ecstatic. 

I repeated to him a couple of times that we don't really know how this happens. He however knew, and knew it definitely in thought. 

After a few minutes he said: "Today I really scolded Adam and Eve; if they had not eaten the apple, Herr Wolf would not have died." 

This whole affair was as important to the young boy as things are for us when something really bad happens. But I am almost surprised—moved by the naïveté of the piety that awakens at such a moment in an otherwise completely wild young boy who is thinking of nothing. And there I stood—I who was supposed to "know the answer"—feeling quite small next to him; and I cannot forget the confident expression he had on his face when he left.

Bonhoeffer. 2010. Eric Metaxas. Nashville: Thomas Nelson: 136-7