Today I’ve been struck by a comment on how we relate to God.

The comment was that our relationship with God is a covenant, not a contract, and that the two are different.

A contract involves saying “you do this for me and I’ll do this for you”, while a covenant says “I belong to you and you belong to me”.

If someone fails to live up to their part of a contract it’s considered broken and becomes null and void.

Both sides must stick to the terms for it to work and remain valid.

We can disrupt a covenant by failing to meet expectations but we still basically belong to each other.

Even if one side doesn’t hold up their end of things the covenant remains and the other side still holds on to it.

I’ve always kind of imagined that contract and covenant are just different words for the same thing but hearing covenant explained like this gives me a sense of joy and freedom that a contract can’t provide.

It gives confidence that no matter how many times I stumble and fall God remains committed to our relationship.