Risk or Loss

Tuesday afternoons are my designated “leadership time” when I spend the afternoon with some good coffee and find a place that isn’t the office or home to reflect on stuff that I am involved with currently. This week I got in to a brief conversation with a financial advisor regarding people’s perception of loss in the wake of the earth quake and Tsunami in Japan. He said this: “it is not the attitude of risk but the attitude of loss that people can’t get their heads around.”

Losing something is a painful experience and one that can take a great amount of time and effort to work through. It also means that we things/we will never be the same as a result; life will be different forever. It’s no wonder we don’t want to take risks, why would we put ourselves in a position to lose. If we risk nothing we lose nothing. Yet can we afford to live a live without taking risks? Can we walk in this world just taking the easy option? If we lose nothing will we ever learn anything new?

In these last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about how I seek to take risks both in my own life and in my role within the church. It would be easy to step back and just let things happen around me and keep things maintained well but at the same time not wanting to develop things that are unsustainable. Either of these elements does not reflect the creative and sustaining nature of God and responsibility he places on me as his follower and as a Salvation Army Officer.
Taking risks doesn’t mean doing stuff alone or that it has to be big stuff either.

One of the great joys in my life currently is watching Katherine leaning to walk and climb. There is no fear in her eyes when she sets of just hope and joy as she tries to get from the chair to her dolly. Learning to walk is a risk! Things can and will go wrong. In the same way as we are learning to walk with God and take risks things will go wrong but God never leaves us or change. When we take a risk we witness the sustaining nature of God and His love for His people.

Matt