Slow to Speak

I've had it three times in the past few days...I was quickly dashing off an email and inadvertently either confused someone or insulted someone. Totally unintentional, you know? But I wasn't being careful enough with my words. Contributing factor: I'm the sort who starts to feel tense when I get more than 20 or so items in my inbox. So I try to deal with things as they come in, lest they pile up. In my haste to get these things off my agenda, I was not careful enough with my words. As a result, I had some cleaning up to do, either in taking a longer time to explain myself, or in admitting that I was unthinking and shot from the hip...and accidentally hit a target I wasn't even aiming for.

Then...last night, I was listening to my daughter review her Bible memory work for this week. Of course it was James 1:19-20:

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Okay, so it was email, and not speaking, exactly, and I wasn't speaking (emailing) in anger either--just trying to get a few items off my to-do list. But I think the same sentiment applies. I need to slow down and be more intentional about what I have to say.

In our blab-it-on-Facebook, shout-it-on-Twitter culture, people often seem quick to speak and slow to listen. The tech tools we use seem to make this this sort of speaking ever easier...which means it's more of a problem.

Challenge of the week: slow down and think before putting a message out there, whether spoken, written, or in pixels.