The picture on our home-calendar for February has been of shearers at Rokeby in Tasmania. Three rugged men in blue singlets, shears in hand, stand astride their wooly projects, skillfully going about their sweaty work. Just where they are up to in the day is not revealed, but knock-off time will come, when they will enjoy a cold beer, while the sheep endure a cold night without their woolen jackets.

For me, the element of the story that speaks loudest from the picture is the quiet submission of the sheep. No doubt in this instance at Rokeby, it’s simply evidence of experienced sheep in the hands of competent shearers. All is going well, and all will live to see another day. If March was also allocated to Rokeby-scenes, it might be of contented sheep departing the shearing shed with a skip and a wink.

The prophet Isaiah once mused upon the silence of the shearing shed: ‘As a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.’ Isaiah was not seeing a vision of the scene at Rokeby, but at Calvary; and the profound silence he heard was not evidence of competence but of courageous submission, for the rogues who sheared our Lord dipped their blades in jealousy and steered them with violence. Yet the response? Silence. While his wool (and more) was being removed, he quietly submitted his warm heart to cold hands, so that my lame soul might have the chance to skip.