[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 4 (Thursday, January 6, 2022)]
[House]
[Page H3]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Margaret Grun Kibben, offered the 
following prayer:
  Sovereign God, these times are in Your hands. Incline Your ear to us 
and hear our prayers for our Congress, for our Nation, for its people.
  As compatriots, we are too often separated by politics and 
perspectives, individual certainties, and intractable opinions.
  On this anniversary of national discord and despair, send Your 
healing Spirit among us and tend to the dispiritedness and disagreement 
here within and around the people's House.
  This day, into Your hands we commend our spirits of fear, anger, and 
uncertainty and ask that You would revive in us our shared commitment 
to this country's highest ideals, its strength in its diversity, and 
its power in its defense of the common good.
  On these virtues was our country founded and for them countless 
heroes have sacrificed. Remind us, inspire us--the aggrieved, the 
skeptical, the disenfranchised, all of us--to hold true and remain 
worthy of this noble heritage.
  We offer the words of Abraham Lincoln that once again we would emerge 
from our national turmoil:

       With malice toward none and charity for all, with firmness 
     in the right, as You give us to see the right; to finish the 
     work we are in, to bind up the Nation's wounds; to do all 
     which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
     ourselves.

  Merciful God, restore to us this sacred obligation of unity and moral 
purpose. Inspire us to live lives which serve as a witness to Your 
restoration and reconciliation.
  We pray Your peace over Your people.
  In Your sovereign name we pray.
  Amen.

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