[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16263]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  The Chaplain, the Reverend Daniel P. Coughlin, offered the following 
prayer:
  With Your prophet Ezekiel to guide us, You ask us to be honest with 
ourselves and one another while looking always to You, Eternal Wisdom, 
for lasting vision.
  With strident tone and disturbing discord, Your prophetic words rap 
the beat of every human heart. ``Son of man, when a land sins against 
me by breaking faith, I stretch out my hand against it and break its 
staff of bread. I let famine loose upon it and cut off from it both man 
and beast.''
  Yet You, O Lord, bring the same prophet to the banks of a mighty 
river and ask him to remember the vision. ``Have you seen this son of 
man?''
  ``Along the banks of the river I saw trees on both sides, and every 
sort of living creature that can multiply and live. Fruit trees of 
every kind were growing; and their leaves do not fade nor their fruit 
fall. Every month they bear fruit for they are watered by You, O Lord. 
Their fruit shall serve for food and their leaves for medicine.''
  Leave not our land as lonely dust, O Lord, so we can plant nothing 
and build only on sand. Rather nourish us with Your hidden spring of 
life now and forever. Amen.

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