The Pastor’s Piece, Pastor Keven Cernek, FCFI Chaplain

September 28, 2025
We serve a God who rules over all, and we can rest tonight because we know He isn’t going to
take the night off. We are not trapped in some aimless universe, spinning on a doomed planet,
living a meaningless life and dying a hopeless death. Our God is eternal and all-powerful and
utterly sovereign. What would happen if for a single moment Almighty God would withdraw His
hand from the universe? It would fly off into oblivion and chaos. He is the glue that holds it all
together. If God can hold the universe together – I think He can probably hold us together too.
The Bible says “Yours, LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and
the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is Yours. Yours, LORD, is the kingdom; you are
exalted as head over all,” (1 Chronicles 29:11). Psalm 147:5 says: “Great is our Lord and mighty
in power; His understanding has no limit.” The choirs of heaven sing it this way in Revelation
19:1: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God.” Only God’s infinite power
can so effortlessly keep the universe humming and crackling with energy.
A.W. Tozer wrote these words: “Since He has at His command all the powers of the universe,
God omnipotent can do anything as easily as anything else. All His acts are done without effort.
He spends no energy that must be replenished.”
One Saturday night not long ago, at about dusk the neighbor pulled in the driveway. We were
renting a pasture from him and two of our calves had died unexpectedly and two more were
about to. The neighbor asked me if I would come over and look at the sick and dead calves.
They were in the 750 pound range.
When I got there, it was exactly as he described: Two lifeless calves were stretched out on the
grass and two more didn’t look well. The rest of the herd, which amounted to about 15 calves
total, looked fine. I walked out there and noticed that one of the dead calf’s ear tag was the
number 667. The other was number 666. The neighbor commented on that and asked if that
had anything to do with their deaths. Not being superstitious at all, I said no. 666 is the mark of
the Beast in the book of Revelation. It has nothing to do with young calves on a pasture in
Wisconsin on a summer night – at least not yet. Maybe after the anti-Christ appears, it will mean
something more. But right now, it’s just another number.
I asked the farmer a few questions about his routine for feeding the calves and if anything had
changed that day. He said, no, nothing had changed. So I called the vet. The vet came out and
determined the cause of death was from the animals eating brush trimmings. Come to find out,
the neighbor had trimmed the hedges around his house that morning and tossed the trimmings
over the fence for the animals, only to find out later that the hedge trimmings were poisonous.
The other two recovered and showed no side effects.
On another occasion, a neighbor was out combining a field next to one of our pastures on
another farm. He had unloaded the combine hopper into a truck in another field and when he
returned the unload auger back to home base, he forgot to turn it off. He pulled into this new
field and I noticed as he was combining along the fence row that the corn was running out of the
auger as fast it went in. There was a cattle lane between me and him which meant there were
two fences and about 30 feet separating us. I took off running along the fence to try to catch up
with the combine and when I got alongside him (30 feet away), I began shouting and waving my
arms. His gaze was straight down as he watched the corn feed into the combine head. I ran
faster and continued to wave and shout, but to no avail. I could not get his attention. Every foot
he traveled, more grain was falling out the back. I reached down and grabbed a dirt-clog and
fired it at him. It hit the side of the combine with a thud but he didn’t see or hear it. I knew I had
to get ahead of him. I ran as fast as I could in my Muck boots and work clothes. Somehow, I
managed to get a little lead on him at which time I launched as big of a clod as I possibly could.
It sailed through the air in slow motion, high and deep and hit him square on the windshield. I
was afraid it was going to break. Upon impact, the dirt clod burst into a million pieces. He
instinctively stopped the machine and looked around and eventually saw me. He stepped out on
the platform and I yelled that the unload auger was on, at which time he shut it off.
And last but not least, I drove my car out to the field to relieve one of our hired hands so he
could do something else. Eight hours later, when I got in my car to go home, I discovered that
when he had parked it, he forgot to shut it off. It had idled under a tree for eight solid hours.
Other than a little dead grass under it from the engine heat, there didn’t appear to be any
damage done.
I’m glad we’re not the ones trying to hold the universe together.
(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).