Gentleness

July 24, 2018

I the LORD have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will keep you, and give you for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles;

To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. —Isaiah 42:6-7

Some forty years ago, I took these verses as a personal call from God. It didn’t dawn on me at the time that this was primarily a Messianic prophecy that spoke of Jesus Christ; I just knew God was speaking to me. In a way, personally appropriating a Messianic prophecy is not entirely inappropriate. After all, if a Christian is in Christ, God’s call on Jesus’ life is also his call on ours. Of course, any fulfillment of it in me is only partial and riddled with mistakes and failures, but the call is still there, not just to do something for God, but to be something for God. The “doing” of verse 7 is preceded by the “being” of verse 6. 

When it comes to living out this calling, I can’t say I’ve done a stellar job at either the being or doing, but just yesterday morning, I was sitting at my desk listening to a woman whose judgment I respect tell me of an incident she had witnessed involving a mutual friend whose words and demeanor towards some women was in her opinion cutting and demeaning. Then she surprised me, saying, “You would never do that. You are gentle with hurting people.” I thanked her, and have been thinking about this ever since. This afternoon, reading Isaiah 42, just three verses before the ones that God spoke into my heart so long ago, I found these words: 

“A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment to truth.” 

It’s quite possible that what this person sees as gentleness is just a cowardly or weak spirit; I’d like to think otherwise, but it might just be. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for her words, and for the Scriptural confirmation in this text that has shaped so much of my life  for the past 40 years.