Hi there. This is Mary DeMuth and this is Pray Every Day where I have the joy and the privilege

of praying you through the Bible verse by verse. So happy to have you here today and humbled and grateful

that you value scripture and prayer enough to have me in your earbuds today. So thank you for that.

Appreciate that so much. And also we just welcome prayer for pray every day, really grateful

for your prayers. You pray for Kristen and William and for me as well, just kind of in a discerning

period of whether this is something I'm going to continue. So I just would appreciate your prayers

that the Lord would be real clear with me. So thank you for that. Okay, and today we're

reading Esther chapter four in the World English Bible, and this is what it says. Now when Mordecai found out

all that was done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes and went out into the

middle of the city and wailed loudly and bitterly. He came even before the

king's gate, for no one is allowed inside the king's gate clothed with sackcloth. In every province,

whether the king's commandment and his decree came, wherever it came, there was great mourning

among the Jews and fasting and weeping and wailing and many lay in sackcloth and ashes.

Esther's maidens and her eunuchs came and told her this, and the queen was exceedingly

grieved. She sent clothing to Mordecai to replace his sackcloth, but he didn't receive it.

Then Esther called for Hathatch, one of the king's eunuchs whom he had appointed to attend her

and commanded him to go to Mordecai to find out what this was and why it was. So Hathatch went out

to Mordecai to the city square, which was before the king's gate. Mordecai told him of all that

had happened to him and the exact sum of the money that Haman had promised to pay to the king's treasuries for the destruction of the Jews.

He also gave him the copy of the writing of the decree that was given out in Sousa to destroy them, to show it to Esther and to declare it to her and to urge her to go into the king to make supplication

for him and to make requests before him for her people.

Haythatch came and told Esther the words of Mordecai.

...