[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 11592]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 prayer

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Today's opening prayer will be offered by Rev. 
Simeon Spencer, senior pastor of Union Baptist Church in Trenton, NJ.
  The guest Chaplain offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray.
  Creator God, we bow with thanksgiving for the privilege and call of 
service given the lawmakers of our great Nation. We are awed by the 
grace that brings us all to this place and the gravity of the work with 
which these elected officials have been entrusted. In the wonder of 
such grace and in the face of crucial hours, we confess now with 
humility the limits of human knowledge, of frailty of human ability, 
and the finitude of human ways. And so, in these moments we petition 
You, You the all-knowing for understanding, the all-powerful for 
strength, the everlasting to everlasting for endurance.
  We pray that You will equip both the Members of this body and those 
who advise them with the gifts of Your Spirit, so that the work which 
brings them here might be executed in a manner worthy of Your holy 
Name, bring honor to the memory of those who have served before them, 
and inspire trust in those who have sent them. We wait now in hope for 
the fulfillment of faith that ``they that wait upon the Lord shall 
renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they 
shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.''
  These things we pray in Your great Name. Amen.

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