How sweet is your grapevine?

Just the other day someone replied to an e-mail of mine by saying, “I forwarded your e-mail on to …”

Oops. I intended that correspondence for the recipient’s eyes only.

Too late. Tapping the “send” button is like squeezing the toothpaste. There’s no putting it back in the tube.

I have often told my children, “If you put it online it’s public.” Yet when I send an e-mail, I believe no one else will see it other than the person I wrote—especially not the person I may have written about.

Who am I kidding?

I cannot control what happens to my correspondence once it leaves my cyberspace docking point. So I’d better be sure that I don’t mind the content going viral, as they say.

Do my words belittle someone? Are they derogatory, insulting, offensive? Have I spoken as though in confidence about a private matter?  Would I mind if the general public read what I wrote?

Jesus saw this coming. He warned that our whispered words would resound from the housetops. Was he thinking of e-mail, cell phones, Twitter, and all the instantly humming avenues of social media that encircle our planet today?

“Let your conversation be always full of grace,” Paul told first-century Christians (Col. 4:6 NIV).

When my words hit the proverbial grapevine, I hope they’ll taste like grace.

TO MY E-MAIL READERS: Click on the title of the blog post to go to the actual blog where you can comment in the box at the bottom of the post. I’d love to hear from you!