[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 43 (Monday, April 14, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H1443]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, Rev. James David Ford, D.D., offered the following 
prayer:
  We recognize, O gracious God, that we represent our best selves when 
we see our lives with the perspective of thanksgiving and praise. On 
this day we voice our gratitude for the freedoms we have to express our 
faith in differing and divergent ways, each person with the opportunity 
to believe, each with the opportunity to witness, each with the 
possibility to worship and pray as You have given us the wisdom so to 
do. Just as we hold to our own heritage of faith and our own words of 
belief, so we have been blessed in this Nation by the liberty to 
believe as we believe, to worship as we worship, and to pray as we 
pray. For these gifts we offer this prayer of thanksgiving. Amen.

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