Proverbs 25:23
The north wind brings forth rain,
and a gossiping tongue brings forth an angry look.
Growing up in the midwest, there were somethings that were pretty predictable. At that time, John Cooper was the coach of the Buckeyes. And while he was the coach, they were generally good, but you could count on the fact that we were going to lose to Michigan and in other Big games.
But, you could also count on the weather. There were four seasons. It was going to be hot and humid during the summer. We’d have thunderstorms. It would probably snow. But, aside from all those things, you could almost always see the next storm system coming in. I remember hearing from the weatherman that there were storms coming in, or a cold front coming through and going out in front of the house and looking down the street to the west to see if he was right. Sometimes there would be bad weather that came from the south, and sometimes from the north. But the majority of the time, the weather would come from the west (northwest a little), and you could see it coming.
The same is true with gossip. The results of gossip are predictable. You can count on them, just like you can count on the weather. They are regular, they happen with consistency and they aren’t good.
Every time someone chooses to gossip, they are creating a weather system that will bring some sort of damage. It will bring damage to the person they’re gossiping about or the themselves. Someone’s going to get upset, someone’s going to get hurt.
It’s predictable.
And avoidable. You can avoid the damage and the pain and the bad looks. Just don’t gossip.
That’s predictable too. When you don’t gossip, you don’t get bad looks, you don’t hurt people’s feelings.
