July 18 2017 – Click here to listen
Not long after I graduated from High School, I heard a “rumor” that a young person could make excellent money fighting forest fires in Idaho in the summertime. I lived in Mississippi at the time and decided to hitch-hike to Sandpoint Idaho to fight forest fires for the summer.
Guess what? I arrived 6 weeks too early before the fire season was to begin and they were not hiring. I was told that even if I had arrived during fire season, I probably could not have obtained a job anyway, because they already had a well-trained work force.
I had about thirty dollars when I left, and when I arrived it had dwindled to ten. A man at the ranger station told me that he heard a “rumor” that they were building a huge dam up in Libby Montana and that they were paying young men like “me” big bucks to work on it. (I can only assume that his reference to young men like “me”, actually referred to someone with a strong back and weak mind). I hitch-hiked to Libby Montana. When I arrived it was as cold as I had ever been. I went in a diner and asked how to get a job working on the dam project. I was told that there had been a strike by the union and no one was working.
ARGHHHHH! I was cold, tired, and broke. I eventually ended up hitch-hiking all of the way back down to Louisiana, enduring tremendous discomfort every step of the way, details of which I will not bore you; suffice it to say that it was not a very enjoyable trip. I eventually got a job working offshore on the oil rigs.
This taught me a valuable lesson about listening to rumors and acting upon them without investigating them thoroughly.
Don’t do it!
We all hear rumors occasionally, often about other individuals that we know. It has been my experience that most rumors are not true. Usually by the time it gets to the second or third person, the facts are so distorted that it doesn’t even resemble the original story. Some people “get-off” on gossiping and spreading lies and seem to enjoy destroying other folk’s reputations. Do not be an innocent partner in this by being gullible enough to believe everything anyone tells you, and in a hurry to go out and tell everyone that you know.
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Proverbs 16: 28
A perverse man sows strife,
And a whisperer separates the best of friends.