The Modesty of the Ideal Servant - F.B. Meyer

 Isaiah 42:2 KJV - He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

God is always at work in our world, leading the progress of suns, refreshing grass with dew, directing the flight of the morning beams, and even the glancing light of the firefly.  And while lovingly compassing our path and our lying down, he is not too busy to determine the fall of a shell on the sand of the ocean bottom.  But all his work is done so quietly, so unobtrusively, with such reticence as to his personal agency, that many affirm there is no God at all.

He spreads the breakfast table each morning for myriads living in wood and ocean, and in the homes of men as well; but he steals away before we catch sight of him to whom we owe all.  We know that he has been at work but he is gone without a sound, without a footmark, leaving only the evident touch of his hand.

Thus it was with the work of Christ.  He put his hand on the mouths of those who blazoned abroad his fame.  He repeatedly told the recipients of his bounty that they must not make him known.  He stole away from the multitudes that filled the porches of Bethseda, and the healed paralytic knew not who had healed him.  He lingered as long as he could in the highlands of Galilee, until his brethren remonstrated with him.  He did not quarrel nor cry out, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

This quality is God’s hallmark upon the best work.  His highest artists do not inscribe their names upon their pictures, nor introduce their portraits among their groups.  It is enough for them to have borne witness to the truth and beauty of the universe.  The wish for nothing more than to reveal what they have seen in nature’s holiest shrines, or in the transient gleams of beauty in the human face.  To win a soul for God; to cleanse the scar of the leper; to make blind eyes see; to give back the dead to mother, sister, friend – this is recompense enough.  To look up from the accomplished work into the face of God; to catch his answering smile; to receive the reward of the Father who is in secret – this is heaven, compared with which the praise of man is as valueless as his censure. - F.B. Meyer in Christ in Isaiah