“Of course, we tend to forget the big picture and focus on the minor details.  We take the world and our existence, even Jesus, for granted, and we concentrate on the parts that seem to go wrong.  We discover our family isn’t as happy or straightforward as other families, and we look for someone to blame, one of our parents perhaps.  We find ourselves isolated from the way other people are woven into God’s story, and so we take to imagining that we have a level of pain or hurt that is so much greater than anyone else’s, and until that pain is heard and listened to and understood and affirmed, we refuse to trust or engage or enjoy the bigger story at all.  To a life that is mired in resentment, gratitude is a stranger.  But the only medicine for a life turned in on itself is rediscovering the art of saying thank you.”

from Learning to Dream Again, Sam Wells (p 167)