#219   DEATH OF AN INFANT

Death is a tragic thing; to lose someone close to you is always a blow from which it is difficult to recover; but when the one who dies is an infant, it is doubly hard to take.  A baby's death is invariably met with questions: People ask, "Why does this have to be?" and often there is a sense of outrage and injustice, feeling they have been cheated by God.  These are very natural reactions, and one should feel no guilt about them.  We expect a person's life to have a beginning, middle, and an end.  People are supposed to, rightly, grow old and die.  The Bible even says that "The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and, if by reason of strength, fourscore, or (80 years)."(Psalms 90:10) So when it happens that the beginning of a life is the end, and a life is cut off after a few days or months, rather than the suggested "threescore and ten," we feel that this is, somehow, unfair. 

Yet, when looked at from the perspective of heaven, and eternity, there is a very different picture indeed.  You see, a child is in innocence, perfect and pure in God's eyes.  Genesis 3 tells us that Adam and Eve were innocent until they partook of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; in the same way, children, before they attain to an age of knowledge of good and evil, are as innocent as were Adam and Eve before the fall.  In Romans 7:9, Paul says "for I was a live without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." He pictures an innocent child, "alive without the law," without the ability to understand it; and then pictures that child growing to the age of accountability: "When the commandment came," that is, the capability to understand it; then "sin revived, and I died." Again, in Isaiah 7:16 Isaiah says there is a time in a child's life "before (he) shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good." The one who believes a child is born in sin, inherited or otherwise, has never read Ezekiel 18:20: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die: The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son." No, that little child, born in purity and innocence, has nothing to fear from death -- for he is sure to be in heaven for all eternity, never having committed a single sin.

Here are words of a very wise person, spoken once to a young father deep in anguish, having gone through for the second time the torment of watching a child of his die: He was told, "If you had the power to bring the child back again, you wouldn't do it.  He's in a far better place than this now--he's safe; he has an eternity of heaven stretching before him.  And would you bring him back from that, to this world, full of its sorrow, and disappointment, and pain; and put him through this life, taking the chance that maybe he wouldn't make heaven after all, at the end of a long life of temptation to sin?  No, even if you had the power, you wouldn't bring him back." It's selfishness that says, "That baby was too young to die." We're thinking of ourselves, and what we're going to miss, rather than the well being of the child.  God has done the very best thing that He could do for that baby by taking him home to heaven before he's had the chance to grow into sin.  That young father spoken of before was comforted by the thought that two of his children had already made heaven, and he didn't have to be concerned any more for them -he would see them again, one day.  The Old Testament character David shared this kind of experience.  Read 11 Samuel 12:15-23 to see the kinship that is there, and that others have dealt with the same anguish before you.  David's conclusion may seem a little cynical, and yet there is comfort there, along with the hard reality that must be faced: He said, "While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me."  For additional reading, refer to #214.