Proverbs 18:12-13 "Before destruction the heart of man is haughty, and before honour is humility. (13) He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him."
There was a game show once where the contestant had to be first to fill in the blank. In their haste, people would often give an answer that had nothing to do with the question. They just wanted to be first and to be heard. I have felt for many years that "listening" has become a lost art. We allow our minds to go in so many directions, even while in a conversation with someone else. We do not hear what the other person is saying. I think there may be a few reasons for that to happen. We may be in disagreement with what the other person is saying and therefore we are putting our argument together even before hearing him to his conclusion. We may not be interested in what the other person is saying, so we allow our minds to wander to a far away land. Or, we may be in the middle of doing something else upon which our minds are focused. In that instance, we probably need to ask them to wait just a moment until we finish what we are doing. The second problem that I see in today's passages is the fact that we sometimes do not want to wait until the other person finishes. So, instead of listening, we interrupt them in order to say what we feel is most important. In any of these instances, it seems to boil down to the place that we feel our thoughts are of the utmost importance. Solomon describes that as being "haughty". I seem to be quoting the book of James quite often as we are going through the book of Proverbs. "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath." (James 1:19) Lord, may I discipline myself to follow these wonderful instructions.