Unexpected residents in heaven?

In my last blog entry but one I wrote myself off as something of a Philistine, in the sense of not being given to appreciating art. Yet maybe even I have my moments of artistic discernment. Many years ago I went to an art exhibition in the north Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno. One item in this involved you in opening a door and entering a small room. It turned out that the room was completely unfurnished - except for a number of small terra-cotta figures dotted around the floor. These were stylised little people, just head and body. It turned out that they represented aborted human foetuses. I found myself deeply moved. I visualised a whole town full of people - people who never had the opportunity to be born. It is an image that has stayed with me ever since.

Could there be countless thousands of such individuals peopling the City of God, the Kingdom of Heaven? The status of tiny children in the sight of God has long been a matter of debate. The doctrine of Original Sin claims that we all inherit sin from our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. According to this, humans are automatically sinners simply by being part of the human race. Thus there is no such thing as a time of innocence before the first conscious sin takes place. While the matter is not spelt out in that precise way in the Bible, support for it can readily be found in its pages.

“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5 ESV).

Certainly I smile when I hear of arguments about raising the legal age of responsibility. I was probably not yet four years old when I became aware, for the first time, of doing something really wrong. I wandered up the lane to the side of our house and took a fancy to a glass bauble floating in someone’s pond. I fished it out and walked down the lane with it. Soon afterwards Mum saw me. When I spotted her, to use her words, I “destroyed the evidence”. In other words, I smashed the bauble by the side of the road.

Jesus had no illusions about children. He knew their failings, including how small-minded and quarrelsome they could be. He gives us this vivid picture of children moaning when others did not join in their games:

“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates,
 “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn’.” (Matthew 11:16-17.)

Yet He also talked as though they had a special place in God’s heart.

“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 18:10.)

Who exactly the “little ones” were that Jesus had in mind, we are not sure. They might simply have been new Christians. But all around this passage Jesus is talking about children.

When His disciples wanted to discourage parents from bringing children for Him to bless, He protested:

“Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).

We dare not speculate about heaven beyond what God says in His word, the Bible. The only sure way to heaven is by deliberate trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Yet somehow I would love to think that there is space in heaven for many who never had a chance to walk this earth because powerful and influential interests denied it to them.