Quick to Listen, Slow to Speak

It has recently come to my attention that I am not a very good listener. This is something that I want to work on and grow in through my relationships with others. So often, a friend will be speaking and I will cut them off because our discussion will spur a tangential train of thought. Sometimes those tangents can be really good, but continual tangents reflect a lack of control of the tongue. As humans who so often get caught up in ourselves and having our own perspectives heard, perhaps we can all learn a lesson from the words of those who encourage us to be quick to listen and slow to speak...

We hear from the book of James, "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry"

Additionally, I really like what Madeline L'Engle has to say about listening and intimacy, and think it is something I can really learn from. As this blog can attest, I am not a woman of few words, but I desire to learn to be more guided with the powerful tools of both spoken and written word:

"Intimacy between friends involves a nondominant love, as well as vulnerability. With a true friend we can share the deepest places of our hearts, the dark as well as the light. I have friends whose secrets will go to the grave with me, as mine with them. We listen, we share, we laugh, we accept. We seldom give advice, and when we do it is for love, not power. We play together, and this is a special delight for me in my mid-seventies, to have friends with whom I can play with the enthusiasm and whole-heartedness of a child."
(Penguins and Golden Calves, 24)

Perhaps this is also why I feel so distant from God, because I spend so much time telling him things, when really I should be listening to what he has to say to me. Certainly God is one with whom we can share the "deepest places of our hearts," but I also want to know his. The best place to start is his Word, the Bible, penned throughout the ages by various hands. Further, the Bible is considered the "Word of God," and sharper than a double-edged sword, piercing bone and marrow, even to the dividing of soul and spirit. Why? Because the Bible is relational, it's intimate, just as we can and ought to be with the rest of the world.

Praise God that he enables us to listen in a way that we cannot in our own strength...eyes to see, ears to hear, there it is again... :)