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

Grasping what Jesus means in the passage above is not easy because we have no information on the attitude of little children in the passage. However, I have recently paid attention to the attitude of a little child in 2 Kings and think that it represents a practical example of Jesus’ message.

Most of the time when we read 2 Kings 5, the character that retains our attention is hardly the little Hebrew girl who said: “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” This 19-words-statement represents a dynamite that not just led to Naaman’s healing, but also made him discover and accept Jehovah.

It is obvious that the girl’s attitude is unconventional and the best way to understand it is to zoom in on her profile and the context of the scene. We can assume that for her to succeed in guiding Naaman with faith for his healing, the girl must have prayed many times for herself in a bid to be set free from her slavery state in Aram. However, failing in that initiative did not prevent her from leveraging her faith.

Furthermore, it is important that we consider the risk she had taken to direct a man of authority, an army commander (2 Kings 5:1), an angry man (2 Kings 5:11, 2 Kings 5:12) to a prophet who had no record of healing a leprous person. Yes, Elisha had never healed a man with leprosy. Remember, Jesus said in Luke 4:27 “And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian”.

That girl trusted God even though she had no empirical evidence that Elisha had ever healed anyone from leprosy. That naive trust, compounded with the lack of bitterness she demonstrates despite being exploited in slavery by Naaman are standards you will find in most little children towards adults, and I believe that is the attitude our Heavenly Father expects us to have in our relationship with Him.

Kids easily forget deception and have a naïve trust in adults. In contrast, it is fair to say that most adults are rather hesitant to leverage their faith because of past bad experiences. A little Israeli girl has demonstrated that we are wrong. Let’s learn from her.