Isaiah 42:2

Isaiah 42:2

He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.

The World Record for the loudest shout was set in 1994 by a Belfast Primary School teacher. At 121 db, her shout of “Quiet!” was as loud as a chainsaw! We may not often hear shouts that loud. But we probably all hear – and do – more shouting than we’d like. We live in a world where gaining an audience can be less about what you are saying and more about how much noise you make. It sometimes feels as if whoever makes enough noise to drown out their opponent wins, regardless of who is actually right.  In a world like that it’s hard to imagine a quiet leader. We easily associate loudness with strength and we fear that the softly-spoken will be weak and ineffective.

Yet that doesn’t have to be the case. The other day one of our daughters was describing a teacher at her school who never shouts ‘because she doesn’t need to.’  She has such an air of authority that she is able to command the room without ever raising her voice. That’s the sort of softly-spoken person that we see in this verse. It’s not silence of someone who knows they will never be heard so they don’t even bother trying. Here we see someone whose authority is so compelling that they don’t need to shout. The promised servant will not come to throw his weight around, drowning out his opponents and bullying his way into leadership.

Isn’t that what we see when we look at Jesus in the pages of the New Testament? Plenty of people shout at Jesus, or about Jesus, during his life on earth. But he never shouts back at them. He very rarely raises his voice, and when he does it is never to dominate or silence others. It’s only ever to call people to come to him to him for life (John 7:37, John 11:43) or to commit himself humbly to his Father’s keeping as he takes his final breath. His loudest words are not spoken in anger, or self-promotion, as ours so often are, but only ever for the good of others.

So today, let’s thank Jesus for being the one who speaks to us in quiet, gentle, life-giving words. And let’s ask him to help us tune our ears more and more to his voice, and not be swayed by the voices of the world around us who shout louder.