Two sides to every story

“He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.” - Proverbs 18v17

Of course Proverbs is full of little titbits of helpful advice. Every so often one of them just kind of reaches out and grabs you. That is the case today. There is no deep theological truth, or even a devotional blessing, but juts a little bit of godly advice.

The lesson is simple; there are two sides to every story. This verse makes a clear statement. The first side of the story you hear always seems to be right. We must be careful that we never fall not the trap of only hearing half the story. When we do that we are making a judgement based on only half the information.
First off, we should never be guilty of hearing gossip to start with. However if we do hear one side of the story, we need to “searcheth out” the whole truth and get the other side before we make a judgement. We could stop a lot of gossip problems if we informed the “first in his cause” that we are going to search out the matter.