Pastor’s Piece – Pastor Kevin Cernek, FCFI Chaplain

FCFI

November 23, 2025

I went to the store to get a few items. On my way to the checkout I noticed a rack with an assortment of gloves for sale. Despite the weather trying to trick us every day, I know winter has to be just around the corner. My old gloves from last year were wearing through, so I grabbed a pair of new ones and set them on the conveyor belt. The clerk commented on how warm they looked. Then without warning, she picked one up and tried it on. Um, I don’t think you’re supposed to do that. I then asked to get them at half price, since now they were used clothing. I was promptly denied.

Speaking of the holidays – I wish for it to be like it used to be back in the good old days when I was a kid on the farm. We worked hard all fall to get the fieldwork done, the cattle vaccinated, the lots cleaned and the barns bedded before Thanksgiving Day. Many a frosty morning we were out as the sun came up, working together until well after sunset to accomplish our one goal – get done harvesting before Thanksgiving. I remember one year when Dad went out with the tractor and picker and finished picking the last few loads of corn on the morning of Thanksgiving. We unloaded them into the corncrib and took the elevator down just in time for the Thanksgiving feast. That was fun and satisfying. Those were days of innocence. (Another year he finished the harvest the day after Christmas – you just never knew how the year would go).

One year we built a 30,000 bushel grain bin during the month of October. Everyday after chores while all the neighbors were picking and hauling their corn in, we were inside the partly-constructed bin with the sound of impact tools echoing off the circular walls. We finished that project on the last day of October. The next morning we positioned the grain dryer and set the augers up and we were in business. My brother bought a brand new combine that fall – an International 1460. It was the first year of their rotary combine. We went to work with our 4 row corn head and three small grain trucks. At 3.5 mph, that machine ate the corn up like something we had never seen before. We started at five o’clock every morning, first with the milking and livestock, and then we hit the fields with a passion. Most nights, we went out after evening chores and worked well-past midnight. Sleep was a valuable commodity. Many times, in the middle of the night, one of us truck drivers had to be awakened after the combine filled our truck. It was so warm inside the truck and felt so good, it was hard not to fall asleep. It took us exactly three weeks to combine all our corn that year. We hauled the last load in from the field on Thanksgiving morning at 2:00 a.m. The truck sat in the driveway full that night, waiting to be unloaded the next day. Good thing too, because the grain bin overflowed sometime in the night and we had a goodly-sized pile of corn to clean up. By the time we sat down for the Thanksgiving meal, our hearts were overflowing (just like the grain bin) with gratitude and joy. 

The times have changed since then. Most of the old farmhouses in the neighborhood no longer house the family that made their living there. Most of the farmland around us is rented out and farmed by people who live in other neighborhoods. They come in for a day or two in the spring and a couple more in the fall and they’re gone. They bring their own supplies with them. They don’t buy groceries at our small town grocery store or support the neighborhood businesses. We barely know each other. And competition for the land is intense. The cohesiveness of the neighborhood is lost as time marches on.   

Thanksgiving is the only day of the year where it is perfectly fine to bring out larger plates, loosen up your belt, and gorge yourself. As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, it is always a good idea to reflect on the bountiful blessings we experience here in the land of the free. In James 1:17 we are told “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights who does not change.” That means that God gives only good gifts. It means the way God gives is good. It means He gives constantly. And it means God does not change. That is a lot of giving, and it’s not even Christmas. We have much to be thankful for.

Everything good that we have in our lives comes from the Father above. I could begin making my own list right here, but that would probably bore you. But making lists is not necessarily what God wants from us anyway. As I read the Scriptures, I find that what God wants from us is really gratitude extended upward all the time for all the good things we enjoy in life – and even for the things in life that aren’t so enjoyable because if it comes from God, it must be good, even if we do not see the goodness in it immediately. 

The great Bible commentator from a couple of generations ago, Matthew Henry was once robbed as he walked along a highway. Afterwards he said there were four things that he was thankful for concerning that robbery.  First, he was thankful that he had never been robbed before.  Second, he was thankful that even though they took all his money, they didn’t get much.  Third, he was thankful that even though they took all his money, they did not take his life. And finally, he was thankful that it was he who was robbed, and not he who robbed.

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin)