As United Methodists, we believe that faith is really about love.

 

The gospel is the story of God’s amazing love for us. As John 3:16 teaches us, the story starts here: “For God so loved the world…” Because God loves the world, God chose to come in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, to show us the height and depth and breadth of God’s love. Although we, in our sinfulness, rejected Christ – even to the point of death – still God kept right on loving us. Romans 8:38-39 promise us that “nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord: not life, not death… nor anything else in all creation.” In the Resurrection, we as assured that death is not the end of our story, and death is not the end of God’s love: life and love go on, eternally.

 

God’s great and unfailing love for us is offered freely; we do not have to earn it or deserve it – in fact, we can’t. But God loves us anyway. This unconditional love is called grace.

 

Because of God’s great and unfailing love for us, because of God’s grace, how then should we live? We believe that Jesus pointed the way when he said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).

 

We don’t claim to have all the answers, and we certainly don’t claim to have figured out how exactly to love God with all we have and all we are, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But we are trying. We are learning to live, in the midst of the questions, trusting in God’s grace; and we are, by God’s grace, growing in love a little bit more each day.

We invite you to join us on the journey.