[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 180 (Wednesday, November 1, 2023)]
[House]
[Page H5186]
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:
  Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth. We 
pause today to reflect on the enormity of that eternal truth.
  In You, O Lord, the one who set the stars in the heavens, crafted 
breathtaking landscapes of mountains and valleys, who even now causes 
the oceans to rise and fall, and who sends rain to water the earth, in 
You do we live, and move, and have our being.
  May this reality so strike us that we recommit ourselves this day to 
the pursuit of peace in every corner of Your magnificent creation. Help 
us to defend the innocents caught in the crossfire of Israel and Hamas 
and the blameless who are suffering in the war between Ukraine and 
Russia.
  May we open our hearts and minds, changing the way we, in our own 
arrogance or ignorance, are working against the peaceable kingdom You 
have designed. Help us to set aside our inclination to use words to 
wound, insults to injure, and cruel digs to devastate. You have given 
us so many different relationships, and You have called us to treat 
each one with dignity and respect, with tenderness and mercy.
  We call on Your name today that we would receive the magnitude of the 
help You alone provide and which we so desperately need in the living 
of these days.
  Amen.

                          ____________________