Two and one

...turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding... Proverbs 2:2

How often do we really understand something or someone? For that matter, how often do we really hear something? There is a game used to illustrate the dangers of gossip and how the human race as a species should not be trusted to relay accurate information. "Telephone" is an excellent and enlightening method to show what poor listeners people really are. In case you are not familiar with it, it goes something like this... A line of people are put together. At one end a person is told a bit of information like "The blue cat jumped over the log". By the time it gets to the last person in line it might sound more like "The Bluetooth was eaten by a cat in the fog."
Our brains are like supercomputers. We can process ten times more information as we can hear. That means that every seconds worth of information we hear, our brain has nine seconds left to fill in. Depending on how well our thought life is captured to the obedience of Christ and our knowledge of the Word of God, Satan has a great big playground to get a foothold in. Many of us are so busy formulating what we are going to say next, we don't even really process what we just heard.
What if however, we purposefully use our ears to really listen? To repeat the words in our minds. To summarize them every so often back to the person who spoke them. To make sure we get the clear picture. To hold the message up to God's wisdom and to answer in love and understanding, the understanding that comes from knowing Jesus personally.
Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. Colossians 4:6
If we do those things, then Satan's playground gets a little smaller doesn't it? It also makes putting our foot in our mouth a little harder since a foot can't go into a mouth that's not opened so big. Remember, God gave us two ears and one mouth- so listen (at least) twice as much as you speak!

Satan's foothold,
A nine second playground.
Truth's one second old.
The tongue's unbound.
I know what I heard.
Do you really?
Or did that "little bird"
Create your reality?
In the playground,
It's all about me.
My opinion,
More than understanding.
Words already formed
Before the last one spoken.
A blank page already torn,
Your thoughts only a token.