[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 32 (Monday, March 21, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Richard C. Halverson, D.D., offered the 
following prayer:
  Let us pray:
  For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the 
fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken 
cisterns, that can hold no water.--Jeremiah 2:13.
  God our Father, this sad, provocative word from the prophet Jeremiah 
reminds us of the tragic consequences when people abandon faith in God. 
Having forsaken the foundation of living waters, life becomes futile as 
we dig for cisterns which can hold no water. Somehow help us comprehend 
the infinite tragedy that Godlessness brings.
  We are reminded of the words of Thomas Jefferson: ``God who gave us 
life gave us liberty.'' And the profound question that followed, ``Can 
the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed from the 
hearts of the people the belief that those liberties are the gift of 
God?''
  God of truth, justice, and love, awaken us to the fact that when we 
abandon the absolute, everything becomes relative. Liberty is anarchy, 
and life is emptied of meaning. Help us, gracious God, to find our way 
back to the God of our fathers.
  In the name of the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Amen.

                          ____________________