A poor man came before Rabba asking for support. The rabbi inquired about his usual diet, as was the practice when setting the rate of assistance. The man explained that he habitually ate fattened fowl and drank aged wine, and he did not expect to live otherwise. The Holy One, he said, sent these things to him, and it was the rabbi's business to continue the arrangement.
Rabba was unimpressed. He refused. He told the man that the community's charity fund was for ordinary bread and ordinary fare, and he would not subsidize delicacies at public expense. The poor man walked off disappointed.
That evening, by coincidence, Rabba's nephew arrived on a surprise visit. The household scrambled to put together a proper feast, as custom demanded. Rabba sent for fowl and aged wine, and the table was spread accordingly. The poor man, wandering by, was invited in as one of the guests, and he ate that night exactly the meal he had originally requested from the charity fund (Gaster, Exempla No. 227).
The sages read the coincidence as a small theology lesson. The man was not lying. The Holy One really had sent him fowl and wine that night. He simply had to come to the rabbi's table to receive it. The charity system Rabba insisted on was not a contradiction of providence. It was the channel providence had chosen. Heaven sometimes feeds the poor through nephews who arrive unexpectedly, and heaven sometimes teaches rabbis, at their own tables, what the poor had been telling them all along.