Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The bill has been paid...

Ok...so I'm getting a lot out of Rob Bell's musings in Velvet Elvis. I think this will be my last post today from his book, but this story had to be retold...

"I was having breakfast with my dad and my younger son and the Real Food Cafe on Eastern Avenue just south of Alger in Grand Rapids. We were finishing our meal when I noticed that the waitress brought our check and then took it away and then brought it back again. She placed it on the table, smiled, and said, 'Somebody in the restaurant paid for your meal. You're all set.' And then she walked away.

"I had the strangest feeling sitting there. The feeling was helplessness. There was nothing I could do. It had been taken care of. To insist on paying would have been pointless. All I could do was trust that what she said was true 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.

"This is our invitation. To trust that we don't owe anything. To trust that something is already true about us, something has already been done, something has been there all along.

"To trust that grace pays the bill." (p. 151-152, Velvet Elvis)

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