[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 6, 2018)]
[House]
[Page H1379]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Patrick J. Conroy, offered the following 
prayer:
  Eternal God, we give You thanks for giving us another day.
  The Prophet Isaiah, in the first chapter, begins his message with 
these words: ``Hear, O heavens, and listen, O Earth, for the Lord 
speaks.'' All the heavens and all the Earth cannot grasp or contain 
Your Word, O Lord. Once spoken and unleashed upon the world, Your Word 
catapults imaginings to their heights and penetrates everything to its 
depths. May our hearing turn to listening and our listening make us so 
attentive that it leads to new understanding and new ways of acting.
  Your Word provokes Isaiah to cry out to the people: If only we were 
free enough to be raised up by its power or strong enough to be 
embraced by its full passion. Then we, like Isaiah, would be able to 
hear in our broadcasted news the voice of violence coming from our own 
children, and we would lament as a nation searching for prophetic 
vision until we and our ways of acting change.
  We pray for this vision now, and may all that is done this day in the 
people's House be for Your greater honor and glory.
  Amen.

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