The Telephone Game — Gossip vs. Encouragement - Thursday
Today’s Verse
Proverbs 26:20
Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down. (NIV)
When my family goes camping, one of my favorite activities is to start and maintain a campfire. If you’ve ever done it with any regularity, there’s an art form to getting the fire to start without suffocating it. And it takes regular poking and feeding to keep the fire burning. Over the past several years, I’ve created some whopper campfires. (Typically I like to make them big enough that it gets Arianne nervous.) But no matter how big or small they are, without adding more wood to the fire, they will eventually die out.
We’ve talked a lot about encouragement this week, but today I want to look at gossip a little closer. Specifically, I want to look at how it spreads—it’s not a coincidence that the Bible compares gossip to fire.
We’ve been hearing a lot of new stories about the wildfires out west. Those fires got out of hand (in large part) because of the amount of fuel they had to feed off. In fact, that’s what makes wildfires so dangerous. They can get exponentially larger because of the amount of wood and brush that fuels them. Gossip is the same way. Have you ever heard a bit of juicy gossip that you were told to “keep secret,” only to hear it from 10 other people? Gossip feeds off eager ears and mouths. And as long as there is an abundance of people willing to listen and share, gossip will continue to spread.
Like fires, gossip is pretty simple to stop. Simple…but not necessarily easy. Take away the listening ear, and the gossiping tongue and the fuel runs out. So next time someone comes up to you and says, “Have you heard…?” Just bow out of the conversation. You’ll find after doing this a couple of times, people will stop bringing gossip to you.
REFLECTION
Make the commitment to break the gossip cycle today. Don’t be a listening ear, and make the decision to stop fueling any gossip that comes your way.