Wednesday, March 11, 2009

“Hey, did you hear about…”
I bet you have heard that phrase a lot of times!
Maybe you have even said it more than heard it?

It intrigues me how much we want to talk about someone else.
How we sometimes seem driven to share with others some ‘juicy’ or ‘exciting’ detail about someone.
It is like some thing takes over us and we feel we must just ‘share’ the latest in news...again about someone else!

Now we can be more sophisticated about it…
We can publish details and even photo’s on things like facebook to get our point across.

And then if the ‘someone’ we have been speaking about gets upset, we tell them to ‘chill’, that they are over reacting, that it is just a little fun...

And I am just as bad as everyone else at times.
And I am not happy about it.

What is this about?
Why is this such a strong impulse?
What effect does it have?
Does it do any good?

I think everything we do should have seasoning.
Just like when I eat my dinner I instinctively grab some freshly ground pepper and natural sea salt.
God wants us to season everything we do with ‘love’.
If you read 1 Corinthians 13 you get the idea…
That God thinks nothing I do is that great if ‘love’ has no part of it.
If you really do ‘love’ like we are encouraged to do...you are seasoned to not do something or say something about them that will potentially hurt them.
Love looks to do the complete opposite.
Love looks to do the best for someone, to protect them.
Love even has the ability to cover over sin (1 Peter 4:8).

Proverbs 18:8
The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man's inmost parts.

The reality is that gossip is fun.
It tastes good going down.
But it is not much good after that.
In 2 Corinthians the writer doesn’t have much good to say about gossip. He equates with every other thing we easily consider wrong.

So this week, can I challenge you?
...as I challenge even myself…
Let’s try not to gossip.
But lets try to love each other just that little bit more.
Let's season our thoughts and comments before we let them out.

I think that is a good thing to do...

Something to think about…

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