Covenant

I love the word covenant. It has such a strength to it. A "covenant" seems so much more encompassing than a "promise."
We have a friend who started and is in charge of a spiritually grounded, junior high school in Richmond, Virginia. The Anna Julia Cooper School is for children from low income families in a very challenged area of Richmond. The mission of the school is to provide a quality foundation of educational and social  learning to prepare these students to succeed in their further education and social roles. The mission of the school is within a strongly spiritual framework. The students are selected with diverse scholastic records and home situations.
Each parent of the selected students must sign a "covenant" that they will actively participate in their child's educational and social progress.
Doesn't that use of the word "covenant" frame a beautiful, rich context? It seems to me to be more than a promise. It indicates a promise within a relationship with God. God formed covenants in the Old Testament. The life, death and resurrection of Christ forms a new covenant with us. These parents form a covenant with the school for the health and growth of their children within their relationship with God.
What if all of our promises were framed within a "covenant?"
What if we understood our "promises" to be held within our relationship with God-in "covenant"?
Would that make a difference-even in the promises we make to ourselves?
What promise have you made to someone else or to yourself? If you thought of that promise as a "covenant" made within your relationship with God, would that expand and deepen its meaning?
Blessings-Penny