Alive - by Dave Smith

degrees of unhealthy fear or anxiety.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, many solutions are being offered to help
deal with these problems – as indicated by the rising popularity of
going ‘off grid’, ‘digital detox holidays’ and workplace wellbeing
policies. Some of these may help, but they’re insufficient to deal with
the root causes of our deep-seated fear and anxiety. So, the key
question is: how can we find the real peace that we all long for?
First, we need to realise that true peace, if it’s going to be deep and
lasting, needs to be approached holistically. In a Peanuts cartoon,
Lucy expressed her frustration to Charlie Brown: ‘I hate everything. I
hate everybody. I hate the whole, wide world!’ Surprised, Charlie
Brown replied, ‘But I thought you had inner peace.’ ‘I do have inner
peace,’ Lucy retorted. ‘But I still have outer obnoxiousness!’ 4 Put
simply, we can’t afford just to focus narrowly on what we may call
‘inner peace’. Rather, we need to recognise that the lack of peace or
wellbeing in one area of our life can have a huge impact on many
other areas – be that physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally,
financially and/or vocationally.
Like a dashboard on a car with various dials (see following
diagram), we need to attend to each area of our lives if we are to
enjoy ‘true peace’.