Thoughts on Reading

How can we undo the media oversaturation that plagues us? I'm reading through Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God and I'm amazed at the manner and ways that these women went to the mission field. Gladys Aylward, a missionary in China, explains that she "read an article about China that made a terrific impression on me. To realize that millions of Chinese had never heard of Jesus Christ was to me a staggering thought, and I felt we ought to do something about it." This statement took me by surprise. The idea that a simple article about the unchurched in China would be the vehicle by which God would call this woman to serve in China does not fit into my modern framework. I cannot imagine being so impacted by a short piece of writing. The trouble is that writing (and reading for that matter) has sadly lost much of its power. We read more than we ever have before via the internet and texting; we have become so desensitized to the written word. I worry about the implications of what we are losing in relationship to God's Holy Word. Does it impact us the way that it did a generation ago? Are we reading it for all its worth?