Devotional: Interfaith Dialogue

Dear God of every nation and tongue,

When the prophet Amos thundered his demand — "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" — he was speaking to a people who had built walls around their worship. They had perfected their rituals while ignoring the cries of their neighbors. The stream of righteousness was dammed up behind the stones of their own certainty.

John Wesley understood this danger. He famously declared, "The world is my parish," and he meant it. Wesley sat with Moravians whose theology unsettled him. He corresponded with Catholics when polite Anglicans wouldn't dare. He didn't abandon his convictions — he carried them into the room and let them be sharpened by honest encounter.

Father, forgive us when we mistake isolation for faithfulness. Teach us that listening to a Muslim neighbor describe her evening prayers does not diminish our own. Show us that sitting across the table from a rabbi, watching him break bread with trembling gratitude, can awaken us to the holiness we have grown too familiar to notice in our own communion.