I recently read a quote from Kasim Reed, the young mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He said "Atlanta has long been known as the city that is too busy to hate .… we must also be the city not too busy to love one another."

"Not too busy to love one another." Seems like that applies to more than cities.

There's another quote on my mind right now. Most of us, Ronald Rolheiser writes, are slogging through our days, "bleeding, less than whole, unconfident, depressed, going through life without a sense either of its goodness or of our own, going through life without being able to really give or experience delight."

He puts a finger on our our wound: "So much of our hunger is a hunger for a blessing. So much of our aching is the ache to be blessed. So much of our sadness comes from the fact that nobody has ever taken delight and pleasure in us."And too often, we who long for blessing spend time in churches where everyone—even the leaders—are ...