A place in heaven?

Can you think of anything more awful than losing your three young children in a fire? Here's something: you could be accused of setting the fire which killed them. Neighbors who saw the police restraining you as you tried to run into the burning building revise their memories and describe you as unaffected. You're be convicted of murder by a jury which takes only an hour to deliberate. You languish on death row for twelve, protesting your innocence. And then, you're executed. This was the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, executed by the bloodthirsty state of Texas in 2004 although there were reasons already then to dismiss the claim that the fire which killed Willingham's children had even been arson in the first place. An article in the newest New Yorker shows that the case against him was faulty in every aspect. The exoneration is too late, of course. Willingham is, as Bob Herbert puts it, "innocent but dead"; his case "should send a tremor through one’s conscience." Maybe it will finally help Americans see the evil of the death penalty, although I fear we have a long way to go to get there.

I've been wondering about heaven recently (triggered by a somewhat dorky sermon I heard suggesting that of course atheists can go to heaven, and stay atheists). Heaven hasn't been a subject on which I've ever spent much time reflecting. But the case of Willingham makes me want very much for heaven to be real, so one can imagine the reunion of this long-suffering man with the children he loved.