A FEW WEEKS AGO, as I was scrolling through the latest headlines on the Internet, my attention was drawn to a news report of a terrorist attack in Dahab, Egypt. Just a few weeks earlier, I had been sitting with my husband in a restaurant on a promenade of this sleepy little town situated on the Sinai Peninsula.

Immediately I began to pray for all the parties involved, including the attackers. Christian Science has taught me that prayer is an effective counterforce to violence in the world, and can bring healing to any situation. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, once said"... unite in prayer for peace: For the end of hostility and war among or between all nations, and religious sects,—for divine Love to make us one human family, to have one Father-Mother God, one Christ, whereof the Scriptures bear witness; and to demonstrate the divine Life, Truth, and Love—healing the sick, blessing our enemies, and all mankind" (Inspiration for Life's Relationships, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, p.87

While thinking about these concepts, I found this definition of the word peace: "anti-war; absence of disturbance, concern, or conflict; absence of a culture based on violence." Seeing peace just as the absence of something, however, didn't satisfy me. So I proceeded to look for positive characteristics of peace, such as equipoise, purity, courage, empathy, neighborliness, and love. Peace is a birthright that God has given to each of us. In prayer and deep communion with divine Love, we can claim peaceful qualities for everyone. We don't have to fight for them! As gifts of God, they are naturally ours to live.

Why then does there seem to be so much cruelty in the world? In an Internet chat that I came across not long ago, Neale Donald Walsch, the well-known author of the trilogy Conversations with God, explained that cruelty only exists because we are putting it into the world. As I recall, he said we are doing this because we feel vulnerable and hurt. And that we feel vulnerable and hurt because we have forgotten who we really are. Walsch added that we are here to remind others of who they really are.

How can we do this? By helping people understand God's promise in Genesis: "[I] will bless you, and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing" (Gen. 12:2, Luther Bible). We are the blessed children of God, and we can bless one another.

To bless is an active spiritual act, independent of time or distance. All true prayers are blessings. They help us be compassionate and merciful, at any time and in any place. And they allow us to overcome evil with good, starting in our own lives.

When you, or people around you, feel hurt, not respected, restricted, or inferior, you can claim in prayer the presence of divine care for all. In reality, we're all perfect spiritual ideas of the divine Mind, which knows no victim nor perpetrator. Because God's gifts to His children are impartial, you can include both sides of a dispute in your prayers, and in that way bless them both. You can insist that divine order and harmony are inviolable and will manifest themselves in the world. Mentally raising up yourself and others by beholding the protection of divine Love for its creation, you become more aware that nobody can fall from heaven—the harmony of God's all-embracing presence. Everyone is in the presence of one God, who provides good to all.

In ever-present divine Love, there is no room for inferiority complexes, and no power that can escalate to terrorism and murder. Having one spiritual origin—one source, one Father-Mother God—we are all God's children and part of one spiritual family, in which all are created perfect and very good.

Silent daily prayer for humanity, for the world, empowers us to stick to this spiritual fact, wherever there is a need or wherever we may be. It helps us remind one another that we all are, without exception, divinely equipped with all the abilities we need at every moment. This is the way to bless families, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and everyone else whom our thought rests on.

I believe that as we, the human family, accept the magnificent gifts of God and work to use them daily, we will find ourselves abundantly taken care of. And that in this way, we will bring more peace into the world.