Opening Prayer
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09/15/2025
Chaplain Margaret Grun Kibben
God of justice and love, You have told us what is good, that we are to love You, O Lord our God, with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. This first and greatest commandment is written on our hearts. This day and always may we follow Your law.
But help us to see that to fulfill this law, we are obliged to follow with as much devotion the second law, to love our neighbor as ourselves.
These days, when neighbors are often our opponents, when loving them requires us to set aside our anger, when our own wounds bind our hearts from reaching out, help us to realize that to follow Your law is to reorient ourselves to what it means to love You.
As You have blessed us, sinners that we are, may we bless those who have sinned against us. As we stand in debt to Your mercy, may we show mercy to those who have taken something from us. And as we ourselves have violated Your law, yet You love us. May we love even those neighbors who have deeply offended us.
To Your laws we dedicate our lives, and in Your love may we live them.
In Your merciful name we pray. Amen.