Sometimes it happens that in times of distress and fear, or under enemy attacks, people open up to the spiritual.
Atheists may shed a lot of intellectual husks and find an inner kernel of faith.
But even when such an inner wellspring exists, even when it expresses something real, it is transient, it cannot last.
It is a temporary, soothing solution, but on the whole it cannot have a continuous existence.
When a peaceful time arrives, and the heavy material burden is lifted from both soul and body, the spiritual issues surface again.
Peace entails not only the lifting of a burden from the heart and turning one's thoughts upwards.
Earthly peace is merely the shadow of complete, Heavenly peace.
Every form of bounty in the lower world reflects bounty in the spiritual realms.
Earthly peace gives everyone a taste of the eternal tranquility of Divine peace.
This earthly peace is a call unto man, every man, to use the gift of tranquility in order to soar higher, and reach supreme peace through his actions.
Divine peace is the creation of harmony both from and through opposites.
In a state of such peace, different people, different issues and different ideas are bound together not out of necessity, but out of choice.
In our world, differences are a source of estrangement and enmity; but on a higher level, opposites both attract and complement each other.
When this happens, then there is true peace in the world.
This is the essence of the complete, total peace, which reigns in both "the Divine retinue and the terrestrial retinue," ascending to the highest level, the level of "God is peace."
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From an essay, "The Blessing of Peace, " by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz