The Shoe Clerk Who Shook the World
A Sunday school teacher stood on the sidewalk outside a Boston shoe store, working up the nerve to go in. His name was Edward Kimball, and he had one of his students working in the back, a rough young shoe clerk who could barely read or write. Kimball had nearly talked himself out of it. The whole visit felt like a waste of a good afternoon.
Then he pushed the door open and went looking for a clerk named D.L. Moody.
An Awkward Conversation in a Stockroom
Dwight Lyman Moody was not anyone’s idea of a future preacher. He had a fifth grade education. He could not spell. He could barely string together a proper sentence. He had come to Boston to sell shoes, and that was the whole of his ambition.
But Edward Kimball walked back to that stockroom, found young Moody wrapping shoes in paper, and simply told him how much Christ loved him. That was it. No grand sermon. A nervous teacher and a few honest words spoken over a stack of shoeboxes. And right there, among the leather and the twine, Dwight Moody gave his life to God.
From Shoe Clerk to Two Continents
That shoe clerk who could not spell became the greatest evangelist of his century. Moody preached to crowds that ran into the thousands, on two continents, in the days long before any microphone could carry a voice. He founded a school in Chicago to train plain, ordinary men and women for ministry, and that school, Moody Bible Institute, is still sending workers out into the world today.
The Ripples That Reached Billy Graham
Watch how far one shoe store conversation traveled. Out of Moody’s revivals a young man named J. Wilbur Chapman came to Christ and went out preaching. Chapman took a washed-up professional baseball player under his wing and taught him how to handle the gospel. That ballplayer was Billy Sunday, and he grew into one of the most famous evangelists America ever produced. The fruit of Sunday’s crusades reached a fiery preacher named Mordecai Ham. And in 1934, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mordecai Ham held a revival, and a tall teenage farm boy slipped quietly into the back of the meeting and gave his heart to the Lord. His name was Billy Graham, and he would go on to preach the gospel in person to more people than anyone in the history of the world.
Edward Kimball never preached to a stadium in his life. He just walked into a shoe store he almost skipped. Everything else, all the way down to a boy named Billy Graham in Charlotte, came after.
God Picks the Unlikely
Maybe you feel like the unlikely one. Too uneducated. Too ordinary. Too far behind to ever matter much to God. Then read what Paul wrote. “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1:27). That is not God’s backup plan. That is how He prefers to work.
So make the call. Have the conversation. Walk into the shoe store. You may never know this side of heaven what God will start with it.
Keep Looking Up!
Heaven is closer than you think.
May God bless your day.
Pastor Rodney
Related devotionals: Jeremiah Lanphier — the man who prayed alone · Mary McLeod Bethune — the detour that changed everything · Where Heaven Came Down
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If today’s devotional spoke to your heart, my books carry these same themes deeper. Stories of God moving in ordinary lives, scripture for tired pastors and weary parents, and steady reminders that heaven is closer than you think.