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Key Bible Verse: If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me (Jeremiah 29:13). Bonus Reading:1 Samuel 3:1-9

Before the invention of refrigerators, icehouses were common: small barns with thick walls, no windows, and tightly sealed doors. In wintertime, blocks of ice would be cut out of frozen lakes and stored in them, covered with sawdust to help keep them from melting. The ice would often stay frozen well into the summer months, thus allowing people to preserve perishable food.

A man who worked in one of these icehouses lost a very valuable pocket watch while working there one day. He quickly began searching for it, combing carefully through the sawdust. Not finding it, he recruited his fellow workers, and all gave the place a thorough investigation. In spite of their efforts, the watch remained hidden. At noon they gave up and went outside to have lunch.

While they were eating, a small boy slipped into the icehouse. He emerged minutes later, proudly carrying the lost watch. The astonished workers asked how he'd been able to find it.

"I closed the door, lay down in the sawdust, and kept very still," he replied. "Soon I heard the watch ticking."

—Ed Rowell in Fresh Illustrations for Teaching and Preaching

My Response: How can I make time for just listening to the heartbeat of God?

Thought to Apply: You ain't learnin' nothin' when you're talkin'.

—WALL PLAQUE (in the office of then-Senator Lyndon Johnson)

Adapted from Fresh Illustrations for Teaching and Preaching (Baker, 1997) by permission.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

O Lord, keep the world from filling my life, leaving no space for hearing and delighting in You.

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