[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 16, 2024)]
[House]
[Page H137]
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 Father, who art in Heaven, You have taught us how to pray. And 
with this familiar prayer or the prayers that reside deep in our souls, 
we offer these prayers to You. However we approach You, we pray that 
You will accept our manner of worship as holy and acceptable to You.
  Even as You receive us, in the multitude of languages and the range 
of voices that ascend to Your hearing, You teach us also how to love, 
commanding us to love one another even as You have loved us--with all 
our strengths and shortfalls, gifts and gaffes, differences and 
divisions.
  On this day, which marks the 238th anniversary of the passage of the 
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, 
may it not be law but love that compels us to safeguard the freedom of 
religion for our fellow citizens. May it not be statute but stewardship 
of Your grace that calls us to honor the principles of the First 
Amendment, respecting the faith of all peoples.
  Remind us again, that we owe no one anything but to love one another. 
And as we love one another, may we have fulfilled Your great command.
  In the light of Your love, we pray in the name by which we know You.
  Amen.

                          ____________________