Last week I enjoyed an occasion that has been a frequent event in my life for over 50 years: lunch with a gathering of special friends. We’ve known each other since school days in the 1940s and early 1950s, and began getting together as a group when we were young moms.
There were thirteen of us to begin with, a “baker’s dozen”. (We even published a little cook book in that name!) Now our numbers have dwindled, but eight of us are still present. “The girls” supposedly meet monthly, although not every one can always be on hand. For years we met in our homes, for a gracious three-fork spread. Now we’re apt to include a restaurant meal here and there.
I’m frequently asked, “How can the same people be friends for all those years? The answer is what I call “Friendship’s Glue”—and that term actually signifies the lack of gossip. There isn’t a single backbiter in the group. We respect each other, we don’t meddle in each other’s business, and we don’t gossip.
God’s Word comes down hard on backbiting, also called “whispering”—the King James Version term for gossiping and stirring up dissention, which is one of the six things God hates as listed in Proverbs 6:16-19. All too often we see the devastation of dissension and the decaying fruit of “whispering”, which separates friends. And families!
It’s no secret that families are floundering in our contemporary society. Evidence of unfaithfulness, lack of commitment, and self-centered agendas are everywhere. Yet hidden among the glaring issues in troubled families, is a less publicized poison—a deadly potion that causes an undercurrent of strife and heartache in what often appears on the surface to be “the very best of families”.
How many families positively shine on the outside, with a shared value of “togetherness” and mutual support, yet are riddled on the inside with scars and dissensions perpetrated by whisperers? A group may include a number of backbiters, so that it’s impossible to guess where it all began.
But it only takes one whisperer, one back-biting telephone call (or, as a friend commented, one entry on FACEBOOK) to set a destructive process in motion—resulting in the walking wounded, those individuals who have been misunderstood or torn to shreds by an unkind and unruly mouth.
How precious, how wonderful to have friends and family members mutually bonded by Friendship’s Glue!
Margaret L. Been, ©2012
Northern Reflections--glimpses of gold by Margaret L. Been 