The Shoe Clerk Who Needed a Nudge

On a spring afternoon in 1855, eighteen-year-old Dwight Moody stood behind the counter of Holton's shoe store on Court Street in Boston, wrapping boots in brown paper. He had been attending Mount Vernon Congregational Church for months — sitting in the pew, hearing sermons, even renting his own seat — but something restless churned inside him that he could not name.

His Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball, had noticed. Kimball saw the young man showing up week after week, eager but uncomprehending, like someone straining to hear a conversation through a wall. That April day, Kimball almost talked himself out of visiting the shop. He felt awkward, unsure of what to say. But he went anyway, found Moody in the back storeroom, and simply told him how much God loved him.

That was all it took. The voice Moody had been hearing in fragments — in hymns half-understood, in sermons that left him restless, in a longing he could not articulate — suddenly had a name. He gave his life to Christ right there among the shoe boxes.

Young Samuel heard a voice three times in the darkness of the tabernacle and ran to Eli each time, certain it was the old priest calling. He needed Eli to say what Kimball said to Moody: that stirring is not confusion. It is the Lord. Go back, lie down, and when you hear it again, answer Him.