Todays Senate Prayer

Rear Admiral (Ret) Barry Black is the Senate Chaplin. Here is the prayer he read (slowly and deliberately) today to open the Senate:

"Let us pray. Oh mighty God most holy in whom we live and dwell and have our being. We praise you and lift our hearts in gratitude. Hear our intercession for the members of this body. Lead our lawmakers as your led your people once by a pillar of cloud through the day and a pillar of fire by night. Give our Senators more love and more self denial. Make them kindly in thought, gentle in words, and generous in deeds. Teach them that it is better to give than to receive, better to forget themselves than to put themselves forward, better to serve than to be served. Give them the ability to discern the difference between the true and the false as they test the issues through debates and hold fast to that which is good. Keep them close to you and open to each other as they serve you and country today. And unto you the god of love be all the glory and praise both now and forevermore. Amen."

Pillars of clouds and fire does seem fitting for the Iraq hearings today. But asking our senators to have more self denial just seems wrong.