The Midas Touch
By Vickey Pahnke-Taylor

Editor's note: If you've always wanted to sail the Mexican Riviera, you can do it in the company of Vickey Pahnke-Taylor, John Bytheway, and Meridian Magazine. Click here for details. And look for Vickey at BYU Education Week in August, where she will be performing in the De Jong Concert Hall and at the Smith Fieldhouse.

Much of our world turns around money.  The twist on the Golden Rule that goes: “He who has the gold makes the rules” is more true in many circles than we would like to think. Some of our conversational vocabulary borrows on imagery of money, with such sayings as:  “Laughing all the way to the bank,” “You can bank on it,” “She has more dollars than sense,” and — when someone seems to effortlessly get gain — “He has the Midas touch.” 

We have a sixteen-year-old son who recently has begun his journey into the world of jobs, driver’s license, ownership of a clunker car (with attendant insurance payments, and responsibility for fuel and oil change costs), and other money concerns.  We can teach him some things, but others he will learn for himself — some the easy way and some (most likely) the hard way.  It is becoming more real to him these days that money is important, but it cannot rule his world.  Interesting learning curves!

The key to the whole money — or lack-of-it — thing is to have the best perspective.  And that perspective is to utilize the temporal blessings of this world to assist in bringing light and assistance to others as we help our families, our friends, our Church, and gain insight into temporal versus eternal commodities.  Just as many who have great amounts of earthly bounty turn inward, acting selfishly and pompous, others recognize those blessings as a means of making a difference for good in this world.  How grateful we should be for those who do so!

Elder Dallin H. Oaks shared this thought regarding money: 

This gives a new perspective on the Midas touch.

Tips for Using Money Wisely

To have the golden touch, so to speak, can be a huge blessing.  As long we largely determine that it works for us, and not the other way around, we can continue to be prudent in all our dealings and create habits of wise stewardship over the worldly goods that are ours.  It can be the means to many good and righteous ends, without doing us in!

Young people — as young as 12 years or as young as 112 years — can set some goals to better understand how to utilize the temporal gifts of this world, and more humbly gain appreciation for what we have.  As we remember the counsel given in the Book of Mormon, “If laborers in Zion labor for money, they shall perish” (2 Ne 26:31.) we can better focus on financial priorities. We can be wise. We can determine to take to heart Hugh Nibley’s thoughtful remark:  “The body serves us best when we are least aware of it, and so it is with money.”

Add to that this counsel from Elder Franklin D. Richards, “In many respects, the real test of a man is his attitude towards his earthly possessions.  A person who places earthly possessions in the scales against the things of God evidences little understanding of eternal values” (April 1979 General Conference).

Here are a few qualifiers for the acquiring and utilizing of earthly riches:

So my son has a world of lessons ahead of him as he gains understanding of this world’s goods versus the goods of eternity.  In this, I pray he learns wisdom in his youth.  We are here on earth to have a mortal experience.  But by remembering that we are spiritual beings, that all things are spiritual to the Lord, and that we have the capacity to deal properly with the things of this world, we might just have the Midas touch — whether we count our finances in the tens of dollars or in the millions of dollars. 

And by taking care of what we have, and prayerfully learning how to utilize it, we will not lose focus on the things of eternal value.  Now, that might just be the real Midas touch!