Gossip

St. James chapter 3 verse 5 says "concider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark, The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell." In other words this scripture is saying things along the lines of "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" in other words shut up. That same chapter goes on further to say "with the tongue we praise our Lord and Father. and with it we curse men, who have been made in Gods likneness." This is something that most christians have a hard time with. We seem to forget about grace when we hear a juicy peice of gossip, it's hard to remember that the person we are infact slandering is a person whom God created. I am recently guilty of having to learn this lesson the hard way.

An interesting peice of information came to my attention, it was regarding a fellow co-worker and how she was in risk of losing her job. I arrogantly got it into my head that I could save her job by giving her a kind of heads up; so thats what I did I went on to tell her that so and so was saying some stuff and that she better just make sure that she was careful . Yeah, You could almost hear satan laughing from the depths of hell. As the bible states that little spark would eventually burn my forest to a crisp. The rest of the day I worked with the unsettling taste of humility in my soul, I knew that I could not take back my mistake and I could not rewind time and just shut up. I felt like a fool, because I had in fact gossiped about another co-worker in my attempt to help another; I had clearly forgotten about grace.

At the end of the day I went to my manager for her help on filling out some paper work. She, at that time informed me as nice as possible that I needed to mind my own business and that my mouth was going to get me into trouble. I sat there stunned that word had already gotten back to her and of course like in any telephone game the story had completely changed. The co-worker had gone back to the manager and told her that I also didn't like our other co-worker. My jaw dropped as flames decimated all the last remaining shrubs in my forrest, Humility again overladed my soul and i could feel my size 8 foot thoroughly stuck in my mouth.

An hour had gone by as I had gathered all co-workers together to explain my rediculous behavour and that I wasn't trying to start problems with anyone. I was only trying to help someone when I should have clearly kept my mouth shut. For future reference I will be quick to just shut up and quelch my curse of gab; Jesus commanded us to love others as we love ourselves. It is not our place to intefere in a persons life as if we are God as if I am God. It is only my place to have grace and love and to use these throughout my life. This is a lesson well learned.