PRAYER FOR THE SENATE
Monday, May 5, 2003
Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff
GUEST CHAPLAIN
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.