God is everywhere (He's omnipresent)

God doesn't have a physical, in-one-place-ony body. He's spirit, and he's present everywhere all the time. But if you leave your children with only that description, they'll start thinking of God as air or as a formless ghost. It can be very hard for children to relate to a Heavenly Father who has no substance and is in no particular place.

So how can we help them understand? First of all, just because God is spirit doesn't mean that he can't be ina specific place at a particular time or that he has no substance. Angels are spirit too, but the Bible describes them as having form and substance. But while angels can be in only one place at a time, God is described in the Bible as being able to simultaneously be in one spot and be everywhere. Yet he's not depicted like air and without substance: The Bible talks many times about God's throne and throne room, allowing us to picture him with substance and in one spot. God represented himself visibly to the Israelites in a cloud on many different occasions, again demonstrating his willingness to be understood in a more concrete manner. And in Genesis the Bible talks about God walking in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

One way to help your children understand this concept is to use the analogy of an aquarium. Though very limited, the analogy is effective for this purpose. The fish see the aquarium as a big place, as their entire world. It's impossible for them to see more than one small part of it at a time. However your children can look at the aquarium and see all the fish and their entire world all at once. Your children still have substance; it's just that both their field of vision and their ability to gather information are far greater than those of the fish.

While explaining this to our children, we can use the opportunity to reinforce the benefits of putting our lives in God's hands. The fact that God can be everywhere at the same time means that he can give each one of us his personal love and attention and be with us always. It's like having a personal teacher or coach as opposed to sharing one teacher or coach with thirty other kids. It means that when you talk to God, you never get a busy signal.