The Middle East, rich in religious history, today demands a recognition of spiritual history as a basis for lasting peace. This is not to discount the many lessons given to mankind throughout the ages by religious leaders but rather to purify these lessons of material interpretations, which would distort or even totally eclipse them. It is essential today that prayers for the Middle East exalt Abraham's message that there is but one God.

The fullness of the revelation includes the fact that this one God is the creator and Parent of all. It evaluates man, collectively and individually, as the child of God. "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God" (Matt. 5:9). These words of Christ Jesus indicate the relationship between God's children and peacemaking. As one recognizes his or her own spiritual status, one naturally contributes to peace. There is urgency today to realize prayerfully that our brothers and sisters in the Middle East are indeed the blessed children of the one God and that they and their leaders are safe.

Readers of the Holy Bible find great inspiration in the sixth chapter of Second Kings if, in this case, the spiritual message has not been clouded by reading into it today's political situation. Elisha, a prophet of God, was protected when threatened with capture. His plan for peace, when carried out, provided protection and care for the enemy as well as for his own people.

I have found in recent weeks that striving to perceive the spiritual lessons and spiritual history of the Middle East, when the mortal history often seems so oppressive, lifts my thought to hope that keeps prayer alive. In my study of Christian Science, I've observed that Spirit and matter are frequently contrasted, as are spiritual history and material history. It's clear that enduring and peaceful conclusions can be drawn only from spiritual history.

If we had to sort through all a region's past, religious and political, and untangle every ambiguity before peace could be established, there would be little basis for hope. Such considerations open the door to revenge, or at least to misguided attempts to even things out. This stultifies progress. Spiritual conclusions, which include mercy and forgiveness, open the way for inspired solutions.

Right where mortal history records aggression and retaliation, one can find a spiritual record of temperance, of humanity, of individual self-sacrifice. If such spiritual history weren't more living and more practical than material history, wouldn't these peoples have been annihilated long ago? As we actively cultivate a sense of spiritual history, which essentially recognizes all good to have its source in the supreme good, God, we cannot fail to appreciate that spiritual history far outweighs material history.

In the autobiographical work Retrospection and Introspection, Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivolous and of no moment, unless they illustrate the ethics of Truth.... The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged" (pp. 21–22). This must not be likened to the deplorable practice of rewriting history to serve some political or personal purpose. Rather, it is the recognition that true and unchangeable history is to be found only in the good that is recorded. That which has not reflected impartial and universal love, that which is simply matter-based and matter-seeking, leaves no permanent record when we consider that Life is Spirit.

Spiritual history may seem at first abstract, and mortal history concrete, but the opposite is true. Many today are seeing the subjective nature of what has been called objective material history and are debunking it. When we reason out from the basis of all-powerful, ever-present God, we realize that only good is enduring, and therefore, actually constitutes the only history. Constructive activity and attempts at mutual understanding reflect the spiritual history of God's good government, and the Middle East is rife with it.

Expunging the merely material record of ancient and recent history is the work of peacemaking in which you and I can be involved. Prayers that acknowledge God as now and always having been the controlling power set the record straight. "The true theory of the universe, including man," explains Science and Health, "is not in material history but in spiritual development" (p. 547).

Thinking out from this understanding of man and the universe, we can readily turn from nagging material events to the spiritual perception that tells us what is really going on. Such perception leads to a more universal understanding of mankind and fosters an atmosphere of peace and forgiveness.

Undue attention to the activities of extremists may tempt us to throw up our hands in despair, but such violence is not the whole story, and it certainly is not the spiritual record. Turning to the spiritual record is not an excuse for us to fold despairing hands in complacent composure, however. Rather, it enables us to see the progress already made. Consciously removing from our heart any record of wrongs allows possibilities for good to take tangible shape.

In this age of instant communication, we have the opportunity to pray directly for specific needs in the Middle East and in other areas of the world. As we look at these needs from the basis of a shared spiritual history, we are helping to provide an atmosphere of hope and courage. Our prayer, acknowledging the power of one infinite God, breaks the mesmerism of fear. And our everyday actions at home, in the workplace, and in school make history through the good that is accomplished.

Whenever and wherever tenderness overcomes harshness, honesty replaces shiftiness, indifference gives way to compassion, and true humanhood is lived, spiritual history is emerging to be recorded for perpetuity, and the basis for lasting peace is extended.