Peace of Mind

Joshua Loth Liebman, as a young man, wrote what he considered the “goods” of life and took his list to a wise elder who read the list, “health, love, beauty, talent, power, riches, fame.” The old man looked at the list and, after complimenting him said, “You have omitted the most important element of all. You have forgotten the one ingredient lacking which each possession becomes a hideous torment, and your list as a whole an intolerable burden.” The old man crossed out the entire list and wrote beneath, what he considered the most important of all and wrote the simple words, “Peace of Mind.” Later Mr. Liebman wrote the book, Peace of Mind, that sold upwards of one and one half million copies.

Now if you are content to seek peace on the human level, I highly recommend the book mentioned and many others that will give positive help and astute direction. But if you seek peace on the divine level, the peace the Bible speaks so much about, then I have a great deal more to say.

Let us consider the mind that so many people want “peace of”: What is it? It is amazing that poor definitions are given by so many brilliant people. Consider the definitions, “memory, recollection, power of remembering; intention, purpose, desire; the perceptive and thinking part of consciousness.” Webster has the most of a large page of definition and after you have studied them all you are still “at sea” trying to explain the mental process that we can call the mind. May we consider another definition, “the seat of reflective consciousness” but I can hardly accept that because the mind functions, too often I fear, without reflection.