[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 7485]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

                                 PRAYER

  Dr. Ken Whitten, Idlewild Baptist Church, Lutz, Florida, offered the 
following prayer:
  Dear Father in Heaven,
  Our heads are bowed because that is the position of humility, a 
spiritual characteristic that Your Word says brings grace. We fold our 
hands to express godly fear because You said, ``The fear of the Lord is 
the beginning of wisdom.'' And we all recognize that is the need of 
this hour and this day.
  Our hearts, Lord, break with the families in Moore, Oklahoma. The 
loss and devastation leave us speechless, but it is in these heart-
wrenching days we find ourselves saying that we are not Republicans, 
Democrats, or Independents; we are one Nation in need of grace, 
healing, and salvation.
  We pray that the decisions made in this Chamber today will reflect 
Your heart, a heart for the broken, the bruised, the abused, and the 
abandoned.
  May You help us today to think more about the spiritual than the 
economical, more about the eternal than the temporal; and Lord, may we 
echo that Puritan prayer of old:

       What we know not, teach us.
       What we have not, give us.
       What we are not, make us.

  In Jesus' wonderful name we pray.
  Amen.

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