My Daughter’s Blankie

Read Time / 2 Minutes

Theme / Biblical Investing

As young parents, we felt a sense of panic when we realized it was gone.  We desperately wanted to find it before our one-year-old daughter woke up, since we did not know how to handle its absence.  She was napping as I carried her in a backpack down a busy touristy boulevard while vacationing in Italy.  My wife noticed it first – the pink satin trimmed blankie, with my daughter’s name embroidered in large letters – was gone. 

We turned around and quickly retraced our steps, suspecting that the blankie had slipped out of my daughter’s grasp onto the ground.   We did not go far before we saw a glorious site – the blankie was hanging from a pole in expectation of our search.  Someone had found it laying on the busy sidewalk and gave us a helping hand by hanging it up for us to see. 

Helping others is central to living a meaningful life.  In Philippians 2:4 we read, “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”  When we help others, we are rewarded with personal satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of joy. 

We can have that same sense of reward by investing to help others.  There are opportunities to invest in mutual funds that not only provide a competitive return but are investing in companies that are genuinely helping people.  The companies in these mutual funds may be developing cures for childhood diseases, providing financing to low-income Americans seeking to start businesses, or creating new technology that will improve our quality of life. 

My daughter had that blankie for many years, eventually reducing it to tatters.  The helpful person on that boulevard in Italy will never know the far-reaching impact he or she made in finding the blankie.  May our investments do the same; may they have far reaching impact to help others in ways that we may never know.

Doug Hanson, MBA

Wealth Advisor

(208) 697-3699

doug@christianwm.com