In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell tells the story of a stranger paying for his meal at a restaurant.
He writes, “I had the strangest feeling of helplessness. There was nothing I could do. To insist on paying would have been pointless. All I could do was trust that what she said was actually true and then live in that—which meant getting up and leaving the restaurant. My acceptance of what she said gave me a choice to live like it was true or to create my own reality in which the bill was not paid” (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005], 151–52).