Evening Prayer: Interfaith Dialogue

Gracious God, You who poured out Your Spirit on all flesh — on sons and daughters, old and young, across every boundary we draw —

I confess that I have sometimes clutched my faith like a miser hoards coins, afraid that sharing a table with someone who prays differently might cost me something. But Luke 12:33 undoes that fear. You tell us to sell our possessions and give — to open our hands, not clench them. And I wonder, Lord, if the treasure You ask me to release tonight is not silver but certainty — the comfortable certainty that I have nothing to learn from my neighbor who kneels on a prayer rug, or my coworker who lights Shabbat candles on Friday evening.

The same Holy Spirit who fell at Pentecost sent Peter to Cornelius's house — a place no faithful Jew would go. Peter walked through that door trembling, and walked out transformed. He did not abandon his faith. He discovered it was bigger than he imagined.

So move me, Spirit. Give me Peter's courage to sit in unfamiliar rooms, to listen before I speak, to recognize Your fingerprints on hearts I once dismissed. Not so I will water down the Gospel, but so I will carry it the way Jesus did — into homes, around tables, with bread broken and questions welcomed.