I’ve got this really weird habit of reading things I shouldn’t . . .

My eyes are voracious. They see letters, words, paragraphs and they want to read them. I almost don’t feel whole if I’m not reading. It gets so bad at times that I scrounge food wrappers, drink containers, and (yes, I’ll admit it) advertising flyers. Anything to give me a reading fix.

There are times that my wife wants to slap me. I’ll be at home in the evening, wandering around looking for something, anything, to read. TV doesn’t cut it. For a hardcore reader, that’s kinda like having sex with yourself. The best she can do is roll her eyes and, in pity, say “bless you my child.”

Well, this obsession with words has really put me in a pickle. Ever heard of a group called Voice of the Martyrs? I can honestly say that I wish I hadn’t. Came across them surfing the web one day. My dirty little habit of reading got me into trouble. The graphics caught my eyes and then the words nailed me. I couldn’t comprehend what was entering my brain via my eye portals. “Ain’t no way” was my response. So I simply stepped away.

But, having the hardcore reader syndrome, I couldn’t stay away. Worse, I even signed up for their print newsletter. Now I was really in trouble. I begin to dread the big envelope’s arrival each month. I was drawn towards it like a month to the flame. I hated what I’d read, but I couldn’t stop reading.

One day in desperation I gave it to my buddy Larry. Told him, “Here, read this!” Larry is not a reader. In fact, if you had a “reading scale” you wanted to use to measure a person’s readability factor, I would be the measurement on the high side and Larry would be the one that was marked “none.”

I honestly thought that he would cure me. If he wouldn’t read it, that would mean it really had no significance (weird way of thinking, I know). Much to my dismay, he calls me up within a day wanting to know where I got it. He goes on and on about it. Undaunted, I give him the next month’s copy. He calls me again. This time: “Stop it!” In a voice tinged with something akin to fear, he again said, “please, don’t give me anymore.”

I didn’t. For the next 6-7 months, like clockwork, I dutifully gave him the newsletter. He’d make all kinds of noise, saying he was just going to throw it away. But he didn’t. He always read it. My nonreading buddy, my hope of breaking the habit myself buddy, had been sucker punched when he wasn’t looking. And he blamed me!

So what’s the big deal?

My eyes exposed me to the persecution of my Christian brothers throughout the world. Worse, it exposed me to what I wasn’t doing and how the American church wasn’t either.

More tomorrow . . .