Buy As IS

I heard an interesting story a while ago about a certain old man renowned for his Cattle rearing. This man, on his way to purchase some new stock, was approached by a young teenager who wanted to come along and learn the trade. The elder man agreed. The teenager observed that the older man, when selecting cattle, looked closely into its eyes, shook his head and more often than not, moved on to the next. The teenager decided to ask why the elder man was ignoring the plump, fine cattle that abounded in the ranch. You have a lot to learn young man, said the older man, answering the question. If you see that wild stare in the cattle’s eyes, you better not buy them boy. With that wild stare, they will never be a mother to their young ones, you give them an inch and they will run themselves to death. The young man pondered this a while and said, you know sir, I think this applies to women as well, “If you see that wild stare in their eyes, you had better not chose to marry.

The moral of the story is that we ought to choose “AS IS”. If our choice gets better over time, that will be amazing, we will take that. But if the chosen remains the way it was when we chose – that is fine as well. It’s mostly useless trying to change someone – only the Holy Spirit can do that. If they were doing something wrong when we chose them, why are we complaining now when they still do the same thing? I’ve had several experiences in my life (too many to mention in this post), when I’ve not heeded this principle – and boy did I pay the price. One time, I purchased 2 cars that were cheap but were not working. I felt I could easily fix them up and use them. Well, as you can guess, I ended up paying a towing company to tow them out of the space they were occupying in our yard. This of course was after spending heavily to fix them – and failing. Be wise my friend, buy AS IS.