The Right Kind of Trouble

Earlier in the week [Jordan] had written down the phrase familiarity breeds contempt. He believed it true about [the story of the Good Samaritan]. His fear was that he would open his Bible, read the text, and the people would close their minds and smile and nod and later shake his hand and say, “Great message today.”
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead”…
As he chewed on the text in his mind throughout the week, the two-word sandwich half-dead proved tough as gristle … He couldn’t say that anyone had ever responded with those two words when he asked how they were doing. Plenty would answer with fine or alright, but those were words you might easily hear from an inanimate object…
As he continued grinding half-dead through [his mind], he eventually spit out the word exhaustion: “Ah, now there’s a word to consider.” He remembered an evening several months ago … a popular poet [spoke about] a conversation he’d had with a [monk]. He’d asked the Brother to tell him the antidote for exhaustion; the Brother’s answer had stunned the poet, as it did Jordan:
“The antidote is not rest; it’s wholeheartedness. Half-anything will eventually kill you.” …
[H]e still had two days to hone his thoughts [before his sermon]. Friday was his usual day off and he planned to hike a little in the morning and run errands in the afternoon. Saturday was Grace’s twice-a-month Soup Kitchen; he would need to be on hand to guide Jim and Linda Fairchild through their first experience. So far, those Saturdays were always brimming with trouble, but it was the right kind of trouble…
-From the novel Start With Me: A Modern Parable, by Michael Seaton with John Blase