Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Today's reading titled Hearing Us from Heaven was written by Patricia Rabin.

At 18 months old, little Mason had never heard his mother's voice.

Then doctors fitted him with his first hearing aids, and his mom, Lauren, asked him,

Can you hear me?

The child's eyes lit up.

Hi, baby, Lauren added.

A smiling Mason responded to his mother with soft coos. In tears, Lauren knew she'd witnessed a miracle.

She'd given birth to Mason prematurely after gunmen shot her three times during a random home invasion.

Weighing just one pound, Mason spent 158 days in intensive care and wasn't expected to survive, let alone be able to hear.

That heartwarming story reminds me of the God who hears us.

King Solomon prayed fervently for God's attuned ear, especially during troubling times.

When there is no rain, during famine or plague, disaster or disease, war, and even sin,

hear from heaven their prayer and their plea, Solomon prayed, and uphold their cause.

In His goodness, God responded with a promise that still stirs our hearts.

In 2 Chronicles 714, it reads,

If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from

their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their

land. Heaven may seem a long way off, yet Jesus is with those who believe in Him.

God hears our prayers, and He answers them.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from First Kings chapter 8 verses 37 through 45.

When famine or plague comes to the land or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers,

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