[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8758-8759]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  Lord God, because Your prophet Jeremiah is so highly personal, 
agonizing for his people and constantly interacting with the members of 
his community, he becomes a model for the Members of the 108th 
Congress.
  His hopes and visions, doubts and hesitations, anger and resentments, 
as well as arguments and pleading and bonding with others, all these 
emotions and the troublesome times tear apart Jeremiah's fragile 
temperament and fling themselves upon the pages of his prophecy.
  Jeremiah is realistic and bold as he declares sin inevitably brings 
its own sorrow. People who go after empty idols become empty 
themselves. We are all transformed for good or bad by that which we 
desire.
  Lord, because this prophet will not evade the honest emotional 
reaction of what is going on around him, You make him a guide for Your 
people now caught up in war. Although Jeremiah is never far removed 
from the agony of

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people, hope for him is always stirring just beneath the surface of the 
barren Earth.
  The word of the Lord endures forever. Amen.

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