Someone holds a door open for you. A caller on the telephone asks if it is a convenient time for you to talk. A motorist stops to let you into traffic on a congested road. A salesperson shows genuine interest in helping you find exactly what you are looking for. You clean up the mess you made in the kitchen, instead of leaving it for someone else in the family.

Simple acts of common courtesy—of one person showing consideration toward another person.

Common courtesy is something everyone would like to see more of in society. We all agree: It's more pleasant to be treated courteously than to be treated rudely. It's also more pleasant to be courteous than to be rude. Why? Because courtesy communicates one person's acknowledgment of another person as an individual worthy of respect.

Every person is worthy of respect. And it isn't a matter of whether a person has earned our respect by his or her behavior. We should be respectful of one another and of ourselves because we are the children of God, our common Father and Mother. The message of the Christian gospel is that we should love each other as God loves us—as His beloved children. This is the way Christ Jesus loved. It was with this love that Jesus reformed the sinner and healed the sick. It was with this love that Jesus raised the dead.

Does this mean that being courteous to others can actually have a healing effect in their lives, and in our own? Yes, it does. Every day offers us built-in, natural opportunities to express this form of true Christian love—the unselfed, unconditional love of God, which heals the sick and sinning. The power of Christian love is felt as a direct result of its being brought into expression in the common walks of daily life.

The love of God isn't something we can choose to keep to ourselves. God created us to love, to express divine Love; and daily life provides us outlets for the expression of Love. In other words, we have ample opportunities to be our true selves and to treat others as their true selves—to heal, and to be healed, through the power of divine Love expressed. And no aspect of human experience is too common, or too insignificant, to warrant the expression of divine Love. Such love is unselfed—it puts the welfare of others ahead of oneself.

Courtesy is definitely a form of unselfed love. The word courteous is notable in this passage from First Peter in the Bible: "Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing" (3:8, 9). Being of one mind, loving as brothers, being compassionate—these are eminently recognizable Christian qualities, ones that Christians strive to express. But, right in the midst of these lofty aspects of Christian love is "be courteous." And what follows that counsel, "not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing," makes an immediate connection for us between our actions in daily contacts with others, and our duty to treat each individual with the respect due to him or her as a child of God.

Most of us can see plenty of room in our own life for expressing more courtesty, more unselfed, Christian love—at home, over the telephone, in the office, on the highway, in the food market. What could be better—or more fulfilling—than to have these opportunities to express the love of God to the children of God right in the midst of our days? Courtesy, especially when it springs from true, Christian love, warms the heart as nothing else can.

Make no mistake about it, though, no matter how genuinely we feel the love of God for man in our hearts during moments of spiritual reflection, living this prayer in the give-and-take of our days can sometimes be quite a discipline. There are times when we disappoint ourselves, when we aren't as courteous as we hoped to be in some situation. But each effort we make to hold our thought to the truth of man and to treat others in accord with that truth has potential for healing. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed love, receives directly the divine power" (p. 192).

Barbara M. Vining