Today, I am deeply grateful for those of you who have supported the Dial Hope Foundation with a financial donation. Hope reaches others because of you. Thank you!

A couple was sitting with friends when the subject of marriage counseling came up. “Oh, Tom and I will never need counseling,” Mary said. “We have a great relationship. He was a communications major in college, and I majored in drama. He communicates really well… and I just act like I’m listening!”

One of the wisest people I’ve ever met was an older Catholic nun who had served all over the world. I met her at a retreat center in Geneva, Switzerland, where I was part of a group of students, most of us studying to become pastors.

She had a presence about her. Every word she spoke seemed thought through. And she took the time to get to know each of us personally.

She told us that the greatest gift you can give another person is to listen to them.

Not the kind of listening we do while watching TV, or scrolling on our phones, or planning what we’re going to say next. The kind of listening that hears both the words being said and the feelings underneath them.

Presbyterian scholar and pastor Eugene Peterson echoes these thoughts. He once wrote: “You enter into the soul, the spirit of somebody else by listening to them, not by telling them something.”

The book of James puts it simply: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak.” (James 1:19)

Today, may you give someone that gift.

Prayer: O God, we have all said things we wish we hadn’t, and we’ve all been wounded by careless words. Heal what needs healing. Then make us more content to listen than to speak. Teach us to hear the feelings beneath the words. And thank you, Lord, for listening to us this day. Amen.

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