Slow to Speak

Predictive text – do you love it, or hate it?  Sometimes I am thankful for it, but sometimes it’s annoying. It often tries to correct you when you are purposely spelling something a certain way, like a name, for instance.  And sometimes it won’t give you the right choice for the word you are actually wanting to use. 

I was thinking about how we humans are “predictive” too.  Part of it is just a matter of learning, taking in information from our environment and making assessments based on prior experience.  This is part of how we make sense of the world around us. We know how things operate in the material world, so we can predict what will happen when we interact with them in a certain way.  We know how a person has behaved in the past, so we make assumptions about future actions the person may take. 

But just like our phones, sometimes we can be totally off base.  Have you ever made a judgement about someone initially, and then found out your assessment was wrong?  I sure have. 

1 Samuel 16:7 says,
“Man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart.”

We must be careful about making snap judgments and coming to a conclusion based on limited information.  This is part of the problem with today’s “soundbite” society, in my opinion.  People make a judgement about a person based on one statement, often taken out of context, and the person may get “cancelled” or otherwise relegated to the trash heap of irrelevancy.   It seems those who report to us or write, have lost the ability to synthesize information and come to a reasonable conclusion.  Everything has to be sensationalized, everything is click bait, everything is predictive,  based on personal bias.  This is especially true in a political season, where emotions are high and reason is often hard to come by.

But James 1:19 tells us to, “…be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.”

We need to become less like the devices we stare at for much of the day, less “predictive”and more filled with the love, kindness, and gentleness of the Holy Spirit. 

May it be so.