"Except the traitor."

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“Love that would not let me go.”

Yesterday I heard a sermon that triggered a thought in my mind and I pass it unto you as food for thought for us all.

There was a celebrity that came to the saving knowledge of Jesus and started to use his testimony as a witness of Jesus immediately. Fellow celebrities in despise and disappointment and a touch of rejection said, “You can have him, I don’t care for him anymore.”

I know the feeling of rejection personally. There is a generalized predisposition among human beings that we are control freaks and when we lose control, “rejection” is the only favorite tool left to use.

The fable of Aesop about the Fox and the grapes out of reach renounced as being “too green anyway” can be taken as the proper illustration at this point.

Let us not go back any farther in time but just analyze our present sociopolitical reality. Much of the motivation to support and get radicalized to the point of fanaticism by people towards candidates is due to the fact that if our candidate is elected, vicariously we feel elected.

Whether we admit or not we all are invested with a special interest of our own. Access to power is very important in our desire to control.

Puppet leaders are much loved by puppeteer millionaires because they can be controled and used. On the other hand, a leader who has a mind of his own and ignores the puppeteers is under wrath and hate is the order of the day.

If you turn on your Television today, think of a pig farm. Look at the love affair of the candidates and their supporters and the many millions in donations. You will be amazed to see the adoring look of one for the other.

They exchange among themselves sweet nothings in the microphone equivalent of a lover boy in high school to the cheerleader in turn.

The reason why I want you to think in a pig farm its because every one who plays the game of politics without the fear of God thinks of himself as the farmer and sees others as pigs.

Candidates love voters as farmers love pigs. The voter loves the candidate as pigs love the farmer.

By now everyone must have already arrived at the conclusion that this is not an unconditional love. If you believe the contrary I would like to meet you, because you must believe that the farmer truly loves the pig more than the bacon. I would also like to meet a pig that believes in the unconditional love of a farmer.

Let us be honest, everyone normally loves the pig for the bacon and not because he is a pig. Why should you feed the pig if you do not like bacon?

Going back to our main point of the celebrity who said, “You can have him.”

Remember that a part of losing control over “his pig friend,” this pig is no longer a pig because he has had a change of nature into a sheep and belongs to a sheep farm and a shepherd that loves the sheep unto death and he truly loves him to the point of taken away the sins of the worldly pig and makes him a lamb like himself.

No one in their right mind can make BLT sandwich from Lamb chops.
Once a man squishs the last drops of juice from the lemon it is tossed it into the garbage. In the same way, when a voter finds out he can not puppeteer or use a leader, they say in rejection and hate, “You can have him.” “I do not care about him or her anymore.”

The people users of our generation shamelessly throw away people they cannot control anymore or have never been able to control or did not have what it takes to control the “Broncos.”

Our precious Jesus is so different in that he is with his disciples to the very end of the ages not only as a promise that he keeps but in the very essence of his name as he prayed to his father in private for the Father’s ears. Only when at the of his life and ministry Jesus pronounced the greatest prayer of confirmation that brings so much peace to my heart, ”Father, from those you gave me I did not lose any except the traitor.”

Jesus is not like Cain who said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
To this rhetorical question Jesus answers in word and deed, YES. You are your brother’s keeper.

If you are of Jesus you cannot say, “You can have him or her.”
You cannot say,” I do not care about him or her anymore.” No, my beloved, Jesus never gives up on anyone but the traitor who walks away.

Many loved ones are not indispensable or necessary in my life but “to give up on them” is not from Jesus and I will seek and search for them until they walk away on their own accord but Jesus in me will never fire or divorce anyone I love. Love if it is true love is, “Love that would never let go.”

In his love and mine.

Gerry Gutierrez.

PS. I live life with the desire to pray at the end of my life like Jesus in clean conscience, “Father from those you gave me I did not lose any but the traitor.” Know that I will never walk away from you but by death.

 Photos are in Italy, let us call it, "Making a difference."