There walked a man upon the road, carrying with him a basket of bread and fruit. God and the Devil saw him, and together they had a wager to see which one of them could convince the man to give away his evening meal.<\/p>\n
So God came to the man, and the man looked at God but saw only a poor girl wearing rags and covered in dirt. God said to the man, \u201cMay I eat of your bread and fruit, for I have none of my own?\u201d<\/p>\n
And the man said back to God, \u201cWhy do you not have any of your own?\u201d<\/p>\n
God said, \u201cI have given away all that I have and all that I have made, and now have nothing left of my own.\u201d<\/p>\n
To which the man replied, \u201cThen I shall give you nothing. You cannot expect others to compensate you for your lack of planning and foresight. I have earned this fruit with the hardship of my labours. So why should I give up that which I have worked so hard for to reward you and the frivolous nature of your ways?\u201d<\/p>\n
And the man went on his way and left God behind.<\/p>\n
The man came then upon the Devil, and the man looked at the Devil and there saw before him a lord in all his finery. The Devil said to the man, \u201cMay I eat of your bread and fruit, for I have none of my own?\u201d<\/p>\n
And the man said back to the devil, \u201cWhy do you not have any of your own?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Devil said, \u201cMy men and I have been working all day harvesting our crops from far and wide across the land. I have had it sent ahead to the place that I call home, and a great feast awaits me there, in the great halls of my abode. But alas it is further from here than I imagined and I shall not reach home tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
To which the man replied, \u201cThen I shall give you this food of mine. Your hard work deserves reward, and no-one can fully legislate for bad luck and bad timing.\u201d<\/p>\n
And the man gave the Devil his basket of bread and fruit and went on his way, and the Devil went with him.<\/p>\n
__________<\/p>\n
Notes:<\/p>\n
1. Written May 2014<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br> There walked a man upon the road, carrying with him a basket of bread and fruit. God and the Devil saw him, and together they had a wager to see which one of them could convince the man to give away his evening meal. So God came to the man, and the man looked at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20,96,21,23,22,97,94,95,98],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-a-thousand-and-one-tales","tag-evil","tag-fairy-tales","tag-fiction","tag-folk-tales","tag-god","tag-god-the-devil-and-the-man-upon-the-road","tag-good","tag-the-devil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"