DTR

Israel's (the Church) relationship to God is marked by a series of covenants. In the discussion that I helped lead this summer it was noted that each stage of the progression of God's covenants is marked by an inaugeration ceremony of sorts. Furthermore, during the era of a particular covenant, the relationship between God and the people is often renewed. For example, the covenant between God and the Church during the Mosaic era had an inaugeration ceremony that took place on Mount Sinai. God declares what he has done for the people, basically who He is and his great deeds, and then makes known how his people will relate to him and be blessed. His people will keep the law. During the time period before David, the Mosaic covenant is often renewed by a public reading of the law. Inaugeratory and renewal ceremonies can be thought of in modern terms as "defining the relationship" or as DTRs. Daily instances of DTRs come in family and friend relationships.

Today at lunch I was sharing some good news with Austin and other friends. In describing what had happened, Austing declared "Oh, so you had a DTR! That's awesome!" And so, my thoughts immediately took a tangent to the idea of God's covenantal dealings with his people. Any thoughtful tangent to God's covenanting with his people is a good tangent! Anyway, all of this is introduction to that good news I shared with some of my friends and church family this afternoon.

For the past seven weeks I've developed a good and very enjoyable friendship with Kindel, a wonderful young woman I met at church. As Kindel and I have spent more and more time together, we've both prayerfully felt the desire to a committed relationship with each other. Yesterday evening her and I took a beautiful hike through Kickapoo State Park. During which, it took all of the two and a half hour hike to finally work up the courage to tell Kindel what I felt, and during this pleasant conversation we redefined our relationship. As Austin called it, we had our first DTR.

I'll follow up on this later, but I'm happy to share the news with you.