James 1:19

Cassius Blue Butterfly, Long Key Natural Area, Davie, FL AUG 2012

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; 
James 1:19

Martin Luther, in explaining the 8th commandment [Don't bear false witness] once said that we should seek to put the best construction on everything that we hear our neighbor saying. This is very hard work. It is hard because we usually spent no time at all actually listening to what is being said, but rather we invest our ears, our minds and our hearts in trying to come up with a foolproof defense so that we can win the discussion. Get what we want. Move the scales of the relationship further, perhaps, in our favor. When we invest emotionally in a conversation with our anger before we invest with our patience, with our judgment before seeking to put the best construction on what we are hearing, we have failed at the most basic level to love as Christ modeled for us, taught us and calls us to do. We are called to do better.