Marietta First Umc

We worship God in awe and mystery: We understand God as creator, redeemer and sustainer. In scripture we hear echoes of those who have been called and transformed by God. Those stories are our stories. We live and practice in a long line of saints who have given of themselves so that the world might know Christ. We have experienced the presence of God in our midst. We believe that God has given us reason to understand God’s creation. Ultimately, however, God is mystery and the ways in which God works through us, around us, and sometimes in spite of us are awe-inspiring and at the core of who God is. To abide in the mystery of God means that we do not have all the answers; sometimes we live with the questions. It is faith, “the assurance of things not seen,” that sustains us. Our best lives are lived in community: We do not journey with Christ alone. We are part of a larger community of people answering God’s call to be the people of God, the Church. Community does not mean that we believe the same, vote the same, or even like the same things. It does mean that we are linked in the mysterious power of the Holy Spirit of God to be the body of Christ. In that body we share our joys and our sorrows. We support one another, we challenge one another, and we forgive one another. As the baptized community we are called to live the tenets of our faith together. It is together that we discover salvation, healing, forgiveness, call, mission and discipleship always journeying together in the presence of Christ. There is a ‘True Self’ within every one of us: We believe that the story of creation starts in Genesis 1. Humanity was created in the image of God and it was good. Much like the Apostle Paul in Romans, Chapter 7, we find that we fight an inner conflict. The good that we know, we do not always do. And the evil that we fight, we often find ourselves doing. Over time, the corruption of sin and disobedience, the scars of hurt and isolation, and the dust of lives lived guide