Everyone has experienced  buyer's remorse. This happens when, after you have made a purchase of something like an automobile, you find that you didn't want that car as much as you thought you did when you laid out the money for it. When the thing for which we longed, perhaps for a long time, is in our possession we no longer desire it with the same passion as once we regarded it. Sometimes, if you will excuse the torture of a clich�, "two birds in the bush are worth one in the hand." A thing longed for may be more powerful than the thing possessed. I wonder if that isn't the cause of the poverty of spirit we Christians seem to exhibit in the age of the Messiah, who was once long promised, and who is now among us with an astonishingly generous ministry (Acts 1:1-2). To our shame, we long for the two in the bush in favor of one in the hand. Lord, rescue us from our poverty of spirit!

Long ago, our spiritual forefathers, the saints of the Old Testament, longed for the promised Messiah and foresaw, prophesied and prayed for His coming with deep longing. They saw only in part, despite their perspicuous hyperopia. However, that did not diminish their faith or their sacrificial desire for the messianic reign to be inaugurated. They saw what God revealed to them. That was enough. They passionately looked into the limpid depths of the divine will to see as through a glass darkly what we would see face to face when the living face of the eternal God would become incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. That about which they thought, considered, meditated, prayed, and for which they were willing to suffer, and which they only saw in part now is fully seen by us to whom the end of the ages has come.

What do we do with such a clear revelation? Uh, nothing. It is an object of our passionate longing? Not really. Have we prayed that its meaning become ever more clear to us? No. Have we thought upon the great depth of the divine grace that God's Son was sacrificed for us wretched slaves? None have given that for which we ought to weep for joy more than a passing thought. Have we written treatises of delight about the work of Him who died because He humbly declined to snatch the power of divinity while He possessed its fullness? At best, we have dashed off a few wretched words of impoverished consideration. Have we sung paeans like the Song of the Suffering Servant written in hoped for blood? No, we can just croak a few off key sounds for the One whose back was flayed for our sins. Lord, rescue us from our poverty of spirit!

We act like we are suffering from buyer's remorse. This in itself is an indictment of our spiritual poverty. For the buying and the bought have been confused frightfully and fatally by us. We are the bought. He is the buyer. If anyone ought to have suffered "buyer's remorse," it ought to have been this immaculate Son of God. He has laid out the purchase price to possess us and how disappointing we have been to Him. We have had remorse not over our sins but "buyer's remorse" over the price, which has been paid by Him. The slaves have despised the Son's price. Yet still He calls to us offering the fullness of the price laid down by Him in the humiliating death, which was offered for those who put Him to death. Lord, You have rescued our poverty of spirit!

John Cassian