The Sunday School Teacher Who Found Him in the Shoe Store

In April 1855, Edward Kimball paced the sidewalk outside Holton's Shoe Store in Boston, nearly talking himself out of going inside. His Sunday school student, a nineteen-year-old stock boy named Dwight, was rough around the edges — barely literate, loud, and so theologically confused that he had once confused Moses with Paul. Some in the Mount Vernon Congregational Church whispered that the boy from rural Northfield, Massachusetts, would never amount to much in matters of faith.

But Kimball had been watching young Dwight Moody. He had seen the restlessness beneath the bravado, the hunger behind the fumbled Bible answers. So Kimball walked into that back room, found Moody wrapping shoes in brown paper, and spoke plainly to him about the love of Christ.

Moody surrendered his life to God that afternoon among the shoeboxes.

Within two decades, that stock boy whom church folks had quietly dismissed would preach to more than one hundred million people across two continents, found the Moody Bible Institute, and ignite revivals that shook London and Chicago alike.

When Nathanael scoffed, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Jesus answered by revealing that He had already seen Nathanael sitting under the fig tree — known him before they ever met. The Lord does not wait for us to become impressive. He finds us exactly where we are, wrapping shoes or sitting under fig trees, and calls us by name.