The Pondry of the Day

My pondry of the day comes from a decision my wife and I made in December, 2006. I had been working as an attorney for six years when I was presented with another business opportunity. The new opportunity made little intellectual sense to most of our friends and some of our family. It would require that I leave the legal field completely. Without getting into too much detail, we talked about it for months, studied it out over and over in our minds, prayed about it and decided to take the road less traveled. Now (three years later) the decision has really paid off for us. To be sure, it was a bigger than normal risk we had to take. In fact, some might say it was a bit of a gamble.

This set of events has caused me to ponder a lot on where the Lord stands on risk taking. We know that the Lord is opposed to gambling. The prophets have been uneqivocal on that. The idea of selling my house, taking all of the proceeds and betting them on one roll of the roulette wheel is clearly prohibited. On the other hand, investing in an IRA or 401k or other "safe" retirement is encouraged by many in the Church. So what happens when you face a situation that falls somewhere betwen Vegas and an IRA?

I think the Lord himself weighed in on risk taking when he was here on the earth. In Matthew 25:14-30 (Parable of the Talents), the Lord gives three different men certain amounts of money. Two of the men increased the amount of money the Lord had given them (presumably taking a risk of losing it in the process) while the third man took the safe route.

By burying the money he had protected it and was able to guarantee back to the Lord 100% of the money the Lord had given him. But that was not what the Lord expected. It appears to me that the Lord expected the man to take at least a little risk with what he had been given. The Lord himself used the analogy of money and the Lord would not have used this analogy if he had not agreed with the financial principle being taught.

I only wish I knew how the Lord would have responded had the first two men lost some of the talents the Lord had given them. I suspect he would have still appreciated their efforts, but probably would have given them instructions on what would have been a wiser investment.

The way he does that now is through the promptings of the Holy Ghost. My wife and I had little or no doubt that our road less traveled would work out because we felt that we had been prompted to go in that direction from the Holy Ghost. Without that, we would never have left the law and changed directions.

Just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone currently going through what we went through several years ago.