Welcome back to the real world, buddy.

I drove through the night to Chicago last weekend for an energizing, encouraging, exhausting weekend with friends--then drove through the night back. (There were three of us, and we rotated driving. Don't worry, we were safe.)

It was one of those whirlwind retreat weekends where the "real world" seems a lot less "real" when you get back. But I had about 24 hours to catch up on sleep and generally veg before heading back to work Tuesday afternoon.

An hour after I arrived, I watched a coworker clean out her desk in tears in front of all of us after being laid off.

Layoffs suck. Period. They're demoralizing, depressing and humiliating.

I still have a job, but I think all of us at work feel a little bit less employed, a little less ownership in the place where we spend half our waking hours each weekday, after the events of this week. Layoffs are happening to a lot of people all over the country in far worse proportions than what we saw, and those people need our kindness and our prayers. It's times like these that I think the middle-class segments of American church (which among evangelicals sometimes feels redundant to say) could end up being infused with a fresh sense of urgency to apply Jesus' teachings to the hurting people around them. We try to shield ourselves from this type of physical need, but it's not--and shouldn't be--avoidable.