[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 17253]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 Prayer

  The guest Chaplain offered the following prayer:
  Would you pray with me, please.
  Our Father, we bow before You and we acknowledge You as the one true 
living God. In the darkness, You are our light. In a time of despair, 
You are our hope. And in time of grief, You are our comfort. At this 
time of war, You are our peace.
  In the words of the prophet Daniel: We come to You as the great and 
awesome God, one who keeps His covenant of love with generations, with 
those who love Him and obey Him. And we come to You, O God, and we 
acknowledge that You are righteous, but we are wrong. We have done so 
many wrong things because we are sinners. And yet You are merciful and 
forgiving. We have been wicked. We have turned away from Your laws and 
decrees. We have not listened to Your prophets who spoke in Your name.
  Yet, Lord, we come to You now pleading for Your mercy. We ask that 
You hear the prayers and petitions of Your servants, not because we are 
righteous but because You are merciful and forgiving. We plead for Your 
mercy.
  Dear God, please hear our prayer. As we pray, forgive us our sin. We 
pray, God, bless America. And we ask this claiming the promise in II 
Chronicles, chapter 7, when You have said that a Nation who is 
identified with You, whether they are shaken economically or 
financially or personally or nationally or militarily, that if that 
Nation that is identified with You would humble themselves and pray and 
seek Your face and turn from their wicked ways, You would hear our 
prayer; that You would forgive our sin; that You would heal our land.
  So, sovereign Lord, we ask, please, God of the universe, God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Father of Jesus Christ, we humbly ask that 
as we repent of our sin, You would hear our prayer; that You would 
forgive; that You would heal our land. We pray this for the glory of 
Your name. And we ask these things in the name of Your son and our 
saviour, Jesus Christ, who, through his own shed blood on the cross, 
offers us forgiveness of our sin and reconciliation with You.
  It is in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen.

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