“What is the meaning of this life?” The older I get, the more that question presses on my spirit, and the more I understand Paul’s startling clarity: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

After more than five decades of observing life. people, outcomes, and the strange limits of success and nearly three decades of work as a family attorney, family-strengthening innovator, and parenting ideologue, work that grants me unusually private access to the inner workings of individuals and organisations, I have come to a sober conclusion: nothing in this world is designed to guarantee peace. Not accomplishment. Not connection. Not position. Not accumulation. Not even relationships though relationships are essential, and we are beings made for relationship.

But relationships are not constructed as automatic factories of joy. Marriage is not designed to guarantee peace. Children are not designed to guarantee peace. Being loved is not designed to guarantee peace. Being known is not designed to guarantee peace. Even the most admired lives, the ones people hold up as prayer points often carry private turbulence that outsiders cannot imagine. That is one reason it is said that “it is lonely at the top.” The world can elevate a person’s height and still leave his soul starving.

This is why Jesus said what He said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth.”(John 14:27). The world does not have peace to give because the world itself is restless. And when I say “the world,” I mean everything the world can offer: accomplishments, applause, access, money, romance, influence. None of it is designed as the foundation of inner stability.

So where then is peace found?

I now understand the deeper meaning of Scripture when it says God “has set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The craving is inward. The ache is inward. The healing must therefore be inward. That is why Jesus insists that life is not secured by outward abundance (Luke 12:15), why He warns that a man can gain the world and still lose his soul (Mark 8:36–37), and why He offers a “living water” that becomes an inner spring “welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). In other words: what we seek externally is often a misdirected search for what only God can settle within.

That is why the true theatre of life is not first the marketplace, or the stage, or the boardroom, or even the family name. Life rises and falls in the mind and in the inner man. The content of our character, the quality of our values, the discipline of our inner life, this is where peace is built or broken. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.” (Proverbs 4:23)

And this is where many miss the way: we chase external things to produce internal peace. But peace does not arrive as a by-product of achievements; peace is cultivated in the soul. That is why even when a person “has everything,” he may still have nothing, because the inside has not been fed.

We are not only bodies. Scripture recognises the depth of the human person: spirit, soul, and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23).And when I speak of the spirit, I am not speaking of superstition or performance spirituality. I am speaking of our connection with our Maker, the place where the heart finally stops running.

The soul is the seat of mind, will, and emotion. If the soul is starved, it will demand that money, romance, applause, and achievement do for it what only God can do. That is how we turn good things into idols and then wonder why they fail us.

So yes, if we look at life without God, everything becomes vanity. Not because work is worthless, or relationships are useless, or success is evil, but because none of them can carry the weight of being our peace. They were never created for that assignment.

This is why Jesus establishes the correct order: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)Meaning: pursue God first, not as a technique, not as a shortcut, but as the foundation. Then the “other things” find their proper place. We do not seek them as peace; we seek them as expression. We do not chase them to become whole; you pursue them from wholeness.

And that is why Christ says something that offends the ego but saves the soul: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39). When we build our lives on the world, we lose ourselves. When we surrender our lives to Christ, we finally find ourselves.

So the meaning of life is not the noise outside. The meaning of life is the peace within, anchored in Christ. The world can add things, but it cannot give peace. Only God can do that.

And that is why Paul can say it without drama and without fear: “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”(Philippians 1:21).

So here is my conclusion: any faith, call it religion, spirituality, or practice, that does not minister to my spirit and realign my soul with God’s design for inner peace is not for me. Count me out. And any faith that makes the acquisition of worldly things its chief pursuit and ultimate target is not for me. Count me out.

My power, my priority, my pursuit, today, is simple: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”(Matthew 6:33). Everything else must take its proper place.

Do have an INSPIRED week ahead with your families.