A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.
Proverbs 14:30 NIV
Peaceful Mind
Financial planners tell us that people who have a financial plan experience more peace of mind than those who don’t. According to the 2020 Financial Stress Index, 4 in 10 Canadians say the pandemic has impacted their financial stress levels, and half are losing sleep over financial worries. Notably, however, those with a financial planner feel more shielded from financial stress, with 53 percent saying it does not impact them. Canadians who have a plan to save are more confident in how much they need to save for retirement compared with those who don’t.
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We live a world that constantly screams at us that we need more of what it has to offer. Every commercial and advertisement that we see, no matter what the medium, tries to convince us that we just can’t live another day without that. It will make us happier, better looking, more fulfilled, more content. The Bible teaches us something altogether different, and warns us against falling for what the world offers. Wise King Solomon writes this in Proverbs 14:30: “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.” I know people who can’t resist buying everything. They see some commercial on TV, or stop too long on the shopping channel or Amazon, and they just have to have whatever is being offered. They see what someone else has and just have to have it too. Solomon is correct, of course – envy rots the bones – it eats away at us until we can no longer control our passions. How much better, he reminds us, to be at peace with what we have, which is likely more than we need anyway.
These have been words from the heart.
Bob Beasley