Peace - No. 29
Peace is completely misunderstood and undervalued in the modern world. Everywhere you look, people are stuck in stress, fear, and anxiety. Few people actually seem to live in real peace. The world is frantically chasing peace by other names all the time, and they don’t even know it. If you distill down the promises of most spiritual teachers, business gurus, social media influencers, and politicians, you find that what they are offering is really just a false version of peace. They are promising relief to our fears and insecurities. The spiritual leaders promise meaning and fulfillment. The business gurus promise wealth and success. Influencers promise a way to realize your dreams. Politicians promise national security, economic stability, and personal safety. All of these are just false attempts to gain what we really want, peace.
We want meaning and fulfillment because we are afraid our lives are meaningless. We want wealth and success because we want the security and the social standing that guarantees our place in the world. We want to pursue our dreams because we feel deeply unsettled, and perhaps achieving our dreams will stop the restless unease in our hearts and minds. We want security and safety because, deep down, we are terrified of losing what little we have. Most people are fundamentally afraid of their own mortality. So they look for ways to avoid the reality of their own temporal weakness. The result is always people living in fear while searching for control.
The more I have learned about psychology and sociology, the more it is apparent to me that we don’t really care about nice cars, big houses, job titles, breaking records, fancy clothes, and new toys. What we care about is the social standing, acceptability, sense of security, temporary distraction, and comfort that those things give us. Because we are unhappy, afraid, insecure, and lonely. Our hearts and minds are filled with fear, stress, and anxiety. All around us, every day we are offered promises of relief, but none of it is real and lasting, it's all just noise.
Peace is not just feeling calm and relaxed; it's not a temporary respite from stress and fear. Peace it seems, is the state of being that every human is desperately searching for. Unfortunately, most people are unaware that what they truly desire is peace. If you tell a businessman slaving away for success that what he wants is peace, he usually won't listen. It seems that we are more drawn to false promises of false peace than to the real peace we need. The truth is that it is because we have so rarely seen or experienced real peace, and so we don’t know what it is.
Have you ever spent time with someone who carries peace? You walk away feeling it yourself. A month-long retreat can’t give you the peace that you feel from one hour with a person at peace. This kind of person is not worried about losing their possessions or even their life. There is nothing that can happen to them that they are afraid of. They don’t wake up every day worrying about what people think of them or how they can get what they want in life. Most of the time, their thoughts center around caring for and connecting with other people. They live from a mindset of abundance. They are inevitably sought after by others for advice because they have something people want, even though they don’t know what it is.
Peace is never found in possession or achievement. Generally, people get wealthy, and then they worry about protecting what they have. Accomplishing something great tends to put more pressure on people because now they can’t afford to fail. It’s fascinating how much we tend to obsess over things we want to have and do, without being able to see that what we really want is simply peace. Unfortunately, all the counterfeits to peace are empty promises that leave us right back where we began. We must recognize the power of the promise of peace that God continually offers to us.
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” - John 14:27
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” - Philippians 4:6-7
If peace is not our natural state of being, then we are looking in the wrong places. We can’t afford to cheapen the promise of peace either, feeling ok, happy, and thankful is not the fullness of peace. Peace is not situational, something we feel when things are going well or when we get a momentary respite from life. Peace is something we can feel when the world around us is falling apart. We can live from and experience peace in all things at all times. In fact, we have to ask the question: if we love God but don’t experience peace, then what is wrong?
The key to peace is trust, another word we don’t really understand anymore. We can’t experience real peace if we are still holding onto control in our lives. If we are the captains of our fate, then we aren’t living from trust and won’t experience real peace. We are told we should believe in ourselves, that we have what it takes, but real trust comes from accepting that we don’t. That's when we hop out of the driver seat and begin to understand the relationship with God we were made for. I will go more in-depth on trust in another note. For now, I just want to highlight that real peace is inseparable from real trust. You can’t have one without the other.
For most of my life, I saw peace as weak and uninspiring. It was presented as a feeling you get when you curl up with a good book or watch a beautiful sunset. I understood it as an escape from the grind of real life. It was something you needed when things got too intense. I can’t remember ever wanting peace except in some dark moments like the sudden death of a friend. Years later, when I spent time with people of peace, I started to understand that it is actually powerful. When you are at peace, it is because you stand on a firm foundation. The more I saw and experienced real peace, the more I wanted it. Like most things in life, we can’t understand peace just by talking about it, we have to see it and experience it to understand what it really is.
“The rarest commodity in the world is peace.” - Scott Dohner
Every year, my value for peace grows because I have experienced it. Regardless of what people think they are chasing, it is clear to me now that what we all really want is the peace that passes all understanding. The only way to get there is through trust that leads to transformation. We are all invited to live in peace, but we accidentally undervalue, dilute, and ignore this foundational state of being that we were made for. Peace should be the marker of the people of Jesus. It is contagious; no one sees and experiences real peace without wanting more.
Prayer
God, I thank you that you promise peace that passes all understanding. I thank you that your offer of peace is not like the world's offer of peace. I ask you for an encounter with your peace. There are situations in my life that I feel stressed, fearful, and anxious about. I give you my concerns and choose to trust you and your promises. Please give me your peace in exchange for my fear. I surrender control of every part of my life to you. I ask you to show me how to become a person with a heart at peace.
- John Walt
If this note was shared with you and you want to get future notes, you can sign up here.
