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Imagine that you're dying right now. You approach the gate between earth and heaven, and Jesus comes to greet you, but he looks exactly like the person you most dislike: that ex-spouse or scandalous priest or the employer who fired you or ______. Would you run to him or away from him? Could you embrace him, or would you rather punch him in the nose?

In the Scriptures, we read that anyone who claims to love God while hating another is a liar. If we can't love someone who is tangibly present to us, how can we love Jesus who is invisible? If we won't give love to a person we can touch, how can we give love to the Holy Spirit? And if we don't love every child of the Father who cherishes all of his creations, how can we feel his love for us, especially when we have low self-esteem?

To think we can love God but not that jerk who hurt us so badly is a misconception. The extent to which we love others is the extent to which we love God, because what we do to others we are also doing to our Father who created them and to our Savior who died for them.

Love is like water in a kitchen faucet. When the tap is closed and you place your hand on the faucet, you cannot feel the water inside it, although it is there, waiting to be released. Turn the tap on to make the water pour out, and now your hand on the pipe can feel the vibration of flowing water. God's love is always within us, but we cannot feel it unless we're pouring it out onto others.

Loving the unlikable doesn't mean staying close to those who abuse us, but if we're close to God, we care about them as he does. Loving the unlikable means caring about their eternal souls. It means forgiving them and moving on instead of remaining stuck in our anger while waiting for them to repent. It means praying for them, not just to ask God to change them so our life can become easier, but so that they will enter more fully into God's love for their own benefit.

Loving the unlikable requires that we fix our gaze on Jesus, for we trust that God will make good come from everything. It means responding to their evils with God's goodness while maintaining boundaries of healthy love.

When we love the unlikable, Jesus comforts us with words from Luke 4: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and I share this with you, my precious friend! The Father has anointed me to bring glad tidings to you, to proclaim liberty to you in your captivity, to give sight to you when troubles blind you, and to set you free from the misery caused by evil."

When we love the unlikable, our joy doesn't come from seeing others change. Our joy comes from knowing God's deep, abiding love as we receive his warm, comforting embrace.

-from Good News Ministries

                                                    Memory Lane!            

Let's put this stuff in the category of St Athanasius "Potpourri", a mixture of items that will prompt memories for many of our former St Athanasius members. These include Guidebook and other program-type covers, logos and other promotional pieces, along with an old bulletin, articles, pictures and a few other gems! If you care to see any of these items in greater detail, let us know! We believe that the Wall Tapestry that is seen in the video below is still on display in the Community Center.