The Traveling Salesman and the Farmer's Daughter

The Traveling Salesman and the Farmer's Daughter
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One dark and stormy evening a traveling salesman pulled his car up to a rural farm. "Please, Sir," he said to the farmer, "I'm a stranger in these parts and have got myself lost. Could I possibly sleep at your farm tonight?"
The Farmer said that he could stay, "But the only place we have for you is the guest bed, in the room right across from my daughter's ." The salesman gratefully brought his small suitcase into the house, and to the specified bedroom.

A common bathroon was at the end of the hall, between the guest bedroom and that of the farmer's daughter. As the daughter and the salesman both were preparing to go to bed, they met in the hallway, and struck up a conversation. Quite naturally, the topic of theological doctrine arose.
"We are saved by grace, through faith, and even the faith is not of ourselves," the daughter told the salesman. "Our faith is the gift of God, and our salvation is not by works, lest any of us should boast."
"But we must work out our own salvation, with fear and trembling," the salesman replied. "Don't you know that the fear of the Lord is just the beginning of wisdom?"

Their discussion accelerated from there, becoming a full-scale debate which ran throughout the night and was still going on at the kitchen table when the farmer came in for his pre-dawn coffee. He observed the verbal exchange for several minutes, then stepped in to mediate. "Why must it be either one way or the other?" he asked. "You are both right... but you are also both wrong.
"The basis for our faith is the completed work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, 'It is finished,' the farmer told them. "Indeed, he alone COULD perform the work of our salvation, for not one of us was righteous. And now that faith provides us with the very substance of the deliverance for which we hope, and is the evidence we crave of those unseen things above.
"And, because we possess such substance and evidence, we are able to act upon it, understanding by the enlightenment of his Holy Spirit the things he wants us to know, and doing by his enablement the things he wants us to do, walking by faith and not by sight."

Then they all rejoiced together. The daughter was thrilled to understand that God's work on her behalf had been completed. She didn't have to wait for something more to happen, but could act upon what she knew to be true.

The salesman was ecstatic to know that his Christian walk was not dependent upon his own strength. He could, by faith, be empowered by Jesus Christ's accomplished deeds, casting all his care upon the Lord.

And the farmer? Well, he was delighted that this incident could become a parable, rather than a joke.

smilin' bro. al