telephone

A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.

- Proverbs 11:13 (NIV)

How many of you remember playing telephone when you were little?

It’s the game where you line up, the first person whispers something to the second person, who whispers to the next person and so on until the end of the line, then the last person shares the secret with the person that started it.

The fun was in seeing how much the secret changed from the first person to the last.

It is all fun and games, until the secret is something that you don’t want known and by the time it gets back to you, it’s been blown out of proportion. 

Then it just hurts.

The Passion Translation (TPT) of this verse is: You can’t trust gossipers with a secret; they’ll just go blab it all. Put your confidence instead in a trusted friend, for he will be faithful to keep it in confidence.

Hold your secrets close to your heart, only share with your true friends, gossipers just blab it all. (and by the way, God doesn’t like gossip. See Luke 12:3.)