Daily Scripture Reading: Psalm 124; Isaiah 54:1-10; Matthew 24:23-35

To have light “come” into your life means that there is a period of darkness for it to enter. I get caught up complaining about my “darkness”, when actually it’s really just “dimness” in comparison to other times and places in the world. When I think of darkness in my life I think about my father passing away, issues with my siblings, Maddie’s seizures at birth, and the fact that religion nearly kept me and Amy from getting married. This near miss lead Amy and I to pretty much quit organized religion for about a decade.

I was raised in a very conservative Church of Christ in north Mississippi and Amy is from a charismatic background. After we had been dating a few years and it seemed like marriage was likely we began discussing religion and how it would be better for our marriage and our children if we were on the same page. To me, this meant for Amy to be baptized at my small Church of Christ church (as this was the only acceptable baptism to God and my preacher), take on everything I believed as truth without questioning, and then we live together happily ever after. It turned out that Amy is very stubborn and told me that she was not on board with that. Being the head of the relationship I told her that if it did not go that way, then we clearly would need to part ways, and she said “ok” and we parted ways. We were apart for about 6 months and over that dim period I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be with Amy more than I understood religion so I called her and told her as much and we agreed and got back together. While we were able to get married at my church, my preacher would not marry us because Amy had not been baptized in Church of Christ water, but rather Baptist water. This experience really drove us away from organized religion and has really had me questioning religion ever since.

Once Maddie got to be around 2-3 years old, we agreed that we wanted to expose her to a religious upbringing like we had and so we began looking around the Jackson metro area for our new church home. I wanted to try out some Churches of Christ in the area and at first impression they seemed to be just like the church I grew up in and so we moved on to some other denominations and they were either too large, too small, too loud, too quiet, too unwelcoming, too ________.

I had heard about Meadowbrook when I was in pharmacy school in Jackson and was told not to go there because it was too liberal. I thought we would give it a try and from the first time we walked on campus we were welcomed more than at any other church we had visited. The Sunday school class was thought provoking; the singing was awesome with a mix of new songs, old hymns, and actual four-part harmony. Amy and I did not visit another church and knew this was where we wanted to raise Maddie, a place where I could speak up in class and openly say that I have several unanswered questions and struggle with doubt and then not be asked to leave the premises. Meadowbrook has been our spiritual light in a time of dimness. Do not interpret this as putting Meadowbrook above God, but rather Meadowbrook has shown us a way to perceive God as love and acceptance rather than punishment and rejection. Since we became members, change and uncertainty have been the norm: lost senior pastor, lost worship leader, lost youth minister, lost administrative minister, gained young senior pastor, new direction with worship leadership, gained African American youth minister in an interracial marriage, gained connections minister, gained children’s minister who is spouse to senior pastor, learned to deal with the fact that we are a transient congregation and people come and go frequently, came through what seems like an eternity on a study of gender inclusion, and spent the last few months wondering why someone is not at church on Sunday, if they have left and gone to Lake Harbor or Madison.

I mention these events about Meadowbrook because change can seem like a time of dimness, but I want to encourage each one to remember why you began going to Meadowbrook in the first place and that change does not equate to darkness. It is up to us to reach out to the people out there that need the light of Meadowbrook just as Amy, Maddie, and I did. Meadowbrook has never been a church of perfection, rather a church of love, and needs its members now as much as ever. I encourage you to struggle as I currently struggle to be sure to be involved with church on Sunday as well as Monday through Saturday and to be as positive as possible about the days ahead of Meadowbrook. I sincerely believe that the only way we lose is if we completely cut off communication with God and with each other.

—Beau Cox