"Be quick to listen...slow to speak...receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls." James 1

The implanted word. It requires meekness to receive it, it requires an attitude that is slow to speak, quick to listen. It requires deepest humility.

But think as well about the humble and vulnerable action of God, implanting his word in us. It is a delicate and dangerous pregnancy. He knows what we do with his word. He knows how we abort it, abuse it, pervert it, subvert it, misuse it. This is why it is so important that we listen, that we slow our speech, that we still our anger, that we mature in meekness.

Our privilege and responsibility, much like Mary, is to give birth to the word that has been implanted in us by God. We are to be vessels through which the word is incarnated in the world. But, like Mary, we are never to stop relating to this word, this thing that gets birthed through us. We don't speak the word and then forget about it. We incarnate alongside it. We are the soil in which this word is continually nurtured, out of which this word bears fruit.

It is not enough to preach, or write, or run a Bible study, or play a song. These are only the barest of labour pangs. Giving birth is messy, painful, dangerous. And it commences a life-long love of that (him, her) which is born.

So do not speak (be slow!) unless you are prepared to invest your life in the fruit of that word which is born through you.