[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10437]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  O Lord who gives to everything a season, and a time for every purpose 
under heaven: a time for war; a time for peace; a time for life; a time 
for death; and always time for hope. We take time now, as this week 
starts, and as--we pray--the fighting in Iraq nears its end, to honor 
those who serve, who fight, who sacrifice in times of war, so that the 
time of peace--of real peace--might be.
  We take time now to offer thanks: for freedoms that are far from 
free, for they are bought and paid for at the cost of lives cut short, 
and family dreams that now can never be; and at the cost of lives that 
will be touched and haunted by memories so painful that most of us give 
thanks that we will never know, nor ever fully comprehend.
  Lord, who gives to every thing a season, and a time for every purpose 
under heaven, we honor those who gave their lives; and we honor those 
who still live and serve, within a world that knows too well the time 
of war. And we honor in a special way their families, those they love 
and who love them, for whom the battlefields seem much more close to 
home.
  Give us the faith, the strength, the wisdom, too, to do our part to 
bring about the time of peace for which they fought--and fight; the 
time of peace for which we pray; the time of peace, just peace, in 
which we must keep faith; the world of peace which we must do our part 
to build.
  And let us say, Amen.

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