And I Burst Out Laughing

I have to tell you this. Just now I opened an email from a mailing list that I'm on. I opened it because it said it had a Christmas Offer for me. (I would have opened it eventually anyway, but hey, I love free stuff, and free Christmas stuff at that!) But I had to laugh. Inside it said something to the effect of "Merry Christmas! Please enjoy a complimentary copy of..." (I'm eagerly looking for the book title now - free books - even better!) "...Tortured for Christ..." And, I burst out laughing.

Because, while I'm certain that it's an excellent and important book, and I think the world in general needs to be more aware of just how much persecution of Christians goes on, it was just so not what I was expecting.

I mean, it's like it was saying, "This Christmas, spread the love and joy with a copy of a book on persecution and torture."

Maybe my sense of humor is twisted, or maybe it's simply that I went to bed LATE and I'm up quite early. But it struck me as incredibly ironically funny.

To be fair, I think this particular book give-away is a paid advertisement for an organization that works against the persecution of Christians around the globe, and to raise awareness of that persecution in North America where we tend to turn a blind eye to it. I've certainly received the offer to receive this book a number of times before, in various emails, from various mailing lists that reach a fairly wide spectrum of the Christian world. It was just the presentation of this particular one that caught me as funny. the "We have a Christmas Gift for you - a book about torture" motif that made me laugh.

Like I said, maybe I'm twisted... who knows...