To answer before listening—that is folly and shame. – Proverbs 18:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 2, 2026): Proverbs 18

I have a bad habit. I think it is a habit I share with many other people, but I am not sure. What is the habit? Sometimes, when someone says they want to talk to me, I wonder what they want to say. Then, and this is the bad part, I practice how I might respond. The problem is that I am providing an answer, at least in this imaginary conversation, to a question or an issue that hasn’t yet been posed. Usually, the imagined question is wrong, but that doesn’t mean that the practiced response is forgotten. Sometimes, it has come up accidentally in the conversation, even when it has nothing to do with the current circumstances. I am working on it. I am trying not to imagine a conversation before I have it. I think I am getting better, but it is a work in progress.

Proverbs warn that to answer before listening is the folly and shame of the one who is answering. I think we have been there, on both sides of the conversation. Maybe this happens most often to us when we are trying to deal with companies on the phone. We have a problem, but the answer we get proves they were never listening. Some companies are on my permanent avoid list because this is the kind of behavior they have shown me. All answering before we know the question does is make us look foolish. And I can’t tell you how many major companies look totally foolish because this has been the path they have chosen when dealing with their customers.

There is another, more personal problem. Not every question requires an answer. Sometimes we just need to be heard. But again, answering before we listen proves that the one thing our friends need, we are unwilling to give.

I was watching a run-of-the-mill police drama when I received one of the most important pieces of advice anyone could give us. When we pray to God for an answer to a question, we need to listen for the answer. That means listening to that still, small voice for an answer. But it also means listening to the people around us, especially the ones who have been listening to us. Because sometimes, God places the answer in their mouths. So, we need to listen to what they are saying.

And we need to make sure we pause from all our busyness just to sit and listen.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Proverbs 19