I am writing this piece a few days before Cheese Days begins. You are reading a few days after the festivities have closed. There has been much to preparation for this event by businesses, civic leaders and organizers. Traffic is diverted. Giant tents are erected.  

If you are welcoming or hosting guests, you are busy preparing your home. Shopping, cleaning, trimming and tending to the many other needs fill the spare moments of the day. Monroe has worked hard to welcome tens of thousands and you were welcoming to friends and family.

Cheese Days carries with it a homecoming feel. People who have moved away make plans to come back and reconnect. Families and friends reunite for the festivities. New friendships are formed.  

Churches are coming back together as well. Fall programming and gatherings are in full swing after the summer season. Congregations have been preparing for you as well. In many ways, the return to Fall programming is similar to a homecoming. Friends and family who have been away during the summer months come back together.  

It is also an ideal time if you are interested in exploring a faith community as groups and gatherings reconstitute. However, you can find a welcoming church anytime of the year.    

It is about connecting and engaging with people. It is about supporting others and being supported by them. It is about being community.

Years ago, driving around southern Illinois, I heard a radio ad for Crossfit St. Louis. The tag-line was “Your! Fitness! Community!”. As much emphasis was given to relationships to be formed and the community being developed as was given to the benefits of exercise and the individual’s gains.  

The Church is built around relationships. We form and strengthen relationships with one another. We accomplish this through worshipping together, learning together and serving together.  

Acknowledging the relationship God has with us is key as well. For the Christian, this relationship is key to all others.  

Jesus reminds us to “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

— Reflections appears regularly on the religion page. The column features a variety of local writers, coordinated through the Monroe Area Clergy Group. John Tabaka is pastor of Grace Lutheran Church, Monroe.