ND Women's Dinner and Talk

Well i'm writing about this more than a week later. It's been very very busy but I did want to write about this a while back.

On the 29th Apr we had the women's dinner and talk at church. The topic was 'gossip' and the speaker was my fren Reg.

I'll just say a little about her talk which i thought was really great. She'd really thought about it a lot and made very good practical suggestions on how we can watch our speech.

Firstly Reg defined gossip as talking about somebody behind their back or disclosing somebody's secrets or talking about their personal life. I guess the underlying fact is that gossip is destructive conversation. Proverbs tells us how distructive gossip is and that it breaks fellowship between Christians.

It was a good topic because it is such a prevailent thing... i mean society tells us it's ok to gossip and whole magazines rely on gossip to boost their sales. We want to gossip because we are proud of knowing something that somebody else may not. Either that or we gossip slander because we are unforgiving and we want to whinge about another person. Either way, gossip is destructive conversation.

I guess the challenge for now is to remember that as Christians, we should be looking to build up the body of Christ and not tear it down. Our gossip can cause a fellow Christian to stumble and so it is important to watch our speech. Also for non-Christians, what we say shows what is in our hearts. It is not wise for a Christian to talk badly about somebody else as it is not a good witness to a non-Christian.

There were practical examples that Reg gave about situations where we tend to gossip. I think i was really challenged and it's been on my mind since. I've been in those situations and know there is the temptation to say something that i think is ok but really when i think about it, it's gossip. It's also very aussie i think to make jokes especially pay-outs... am rethinking what is and isnt appropriate. I think the world would be a boring place if we couldnt share a joke but i guess the challenge is not to take it too far. Still learning... please pray for me.