Too Mcuh Ifno

For those of you who know me, I figure that you think I did it again. I forgot to do a spell check on this article. But you would be wrong. Did you read the title to read “Too Muck If No” or “Too Much Info”? Chances are your mind fixed the “typos” and you breezed through to the body of the article. Now if you were like my wife, you would have struggled with the title.

We have a tendency to skim when we read. Do you question that statement? Well just read on: “Aoccdring to rseearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what order the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoantnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae, The rset can be atoatl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tish is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.”

I know the above was a bit much but it goes to prove the point that we tend to read the whole and not the part. I have grown to rely on spell checker and auto-correction programs in Word to get me through.

I have found that I often have the same non-attentive attitude when it comes to listening. I don’t listen word by word. Rather I anticipate the whole sentence and preempt the speaker. I’m sure that many of you do this with your spouses, family or good friends. It often works but sometimes we anticipate (guess) wrong. It can be quite embarrassing when that happens. We are so concerned about what we are going to say, or we get impatient with those who speak slowly that we skip ahead and try to beat them to the punch.

Sometimes I think we do the same thing with God. We jump ahead instead of slowing down to hear His Word. We try to dominate the conversation with God so that we end up with a monologue of our thoughts and hear nothing of His heart on the matter.

Yet the writer James in the book titled with his name tells us that we have two ears and only one mouth so we should be twice as likely to listen and a lot less likely to speak.

James 1:19 (NIV) 19 My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,

Maybe we should all consider slowing down and taking our time to listen to each other and more importantly listen to what God wants to tell you. By doing things God’s way we will be a lot less likely to get angry and a whole lot more likely to be conformed to His Son’s image and way.

“Let him who has an ear, let him hear”,

Dr. Val