Listen or your tongue will keep you deaf
American Indian

There is an old saying that God gave us two ears and only one mouth. Therefore we should use our ears twice as much as we do our mouths. How hard it is to listen when we are sure that what we have to say is the most important thought of the day. Our tongues have gotten all of us into more trouble than our ears ever thought of...

The art of listening does not come easy. When I taught a course on preaching I always began by assigning the students to listening exercises. They had to walk around the campus and see how many different birds they could hear. They needed to sit under trees to hear the different sounds the wind made as it rustled the leaves of the different trees. The art of listening is so important; important especially if you want to have others listen when you speak.

The proverb suggests that it is not so much the trouble our tongue gets us in to, as it is the trouble we can avoid by using our ears. As we learn to hold our tongue we learn to hear better. We hear God speaking to us in the quiet of our souls, we hear each other speaking to us in love and caring. The greatest nutrient to a community of faith is listening. Through it we grow in faith and caring for one another.

We are entering into a period when we have to listen to ourselves as well as to others. Opinions and quick solutions are not as important as informed discussion, exploration of facts and re-defined visions. Let us listen and grow together.

Rev. C. Ronald Wilson