“Look what we’ve got today, Preacher!” Nathaniel Parker leaned over the counter of his general store and picked up a basket filled with dainty molded candies. “Pure maple sugar,” he exclaimed. “Nels Andersen brought it by just this morning. Says he had such a good supply of maple syrup this year that he made maple candy in the fancy molds they brought from the Old Country. He’s selling the sweets two for a penny.”

“I’ll take ten!” said Preacher Mohod without hesitation. The gnarled, disfigured stick with peeling bark that the preacher held in his had, he now wedged into his boot. He grabbed a clean handkerchief out of his pocket, opened it up, and laid it on the counter.

“Why, Preacher, you’ve got more of a sweet tooth than I ever would have guessed,” said the storekeeper, as he counted out the candies into Preacher Mohod’s handkerchief.

Carrying the hankie by the corners, the preacher sat down on a wooden Cracker Barrel near the front door. On the rickety chair beside him he spread out his hankie, displaying the maple sugar. Out of his boot he drew the stick. “That’s better!” he said, rubbing his ankle. Fishing his knife from his pocket, he settled down to work. His dog Mule lay at his feet.

It was Saturday, mid-afternoon. Things were getting busy in the general store as families arrived to stock up on supplies and socialize a bit after a long week. Perhaps it was the pretty pile of maple sugar that drew them, or the anticipation of a story, but one by one the children in the store came to see Preacher Mohod whittle.

“Have you ever seen anything as useless as this?” Preacher Mohod held the gnarled, misshapen piece of wood in his hand. “Now what good could come of something so homely?” The curious children studied the stick and shook their heads. Nodding toward the candy on the chair, the preacher said, “Go ahead, take one.” Each child eagerly chose one as Preacher Mohod continued.

“Once day Jesus was met by a shrieking wild man. The man lived among the tombs. He cut himself with stones and when anyone tried to bind him he would break the chains. Day and night he would run through the mountains and the tombs, crying out. No one could tame him, and everyone was afraid of him.”

“Why was he so awful?” asked one of the children.

“Because he had an evil spirit inside, making him wild. And when he saw Jesus, the evil spirit inside him called out, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus of Nazareth? Swear to me by God that you will not torment me.’ Sometimes people who saw Jesus did not believe that he was God. But the evil spirit knew, and he knew Jesus had authority over evil spirits.Then he asked the spirit its name. ‘My name is Legion because we are many,’ the spirit replied. Imagine! The evil spirits in the man were as many as a legion soldiers, this is 6000 soldiers. The Lord commanded the spirit to go into a herd of pigs (about two thousand of them) and the pigs were so tormented by this that they ran violently down a steep hill and were drowned in the sea.”

The children stared, wide eyed. “What happened to the man?”

“When the people who owned the pigs came to find Jesus they also found the man, sitting quietly, wearing clothes, his torment gone. Now the people were really scared. They didn’t want someone as powerful as Jesus in their neighborhood so they sent him away.

“The man wanted to go with Jesus. ‘No, go home and tell your friends all the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you,’ Jesus told him.”

Preacher Mohod stopped whittling and held up the wood he was working on. “This is a pitiful looking stick. Do you think I will ever be able to make something beautiful of it?” The children shook their heads. The Preacher Mohod reached into his pocket and pulled out a carved horse. “This horse came from the same piece of wood—something beautiful and useful out of something ugly!

“God is in the business of taking old, broken-down, useless people and making them new. It happens when we meet Jesus. God’s Word says, ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new’ ( 2 Cor 5:17, KJV). That’s what he did for the man with the evil spirit. That’s what he will do for anyone who comes to him.”

Preacher Mohod stories are written by Ginger Kauffman and illustrated by Tom Kauffman. They are based on the stories Dad made up for his children. You can read moe about Dad and his Preacher Mohod stories, check out my blog, Dad’s Secret of Living a Long Life

You can read the Bible story in Mark 5:1-20.

Preacher Mohod uses the King James Bible because there were no more modern translations when he lived in the 1800s. That’s also why his language sometimes sounds a little funny.