Jeremiah 11:1-5: in context

God sends Jeremiah to remind Judah of the covenant he made with their fathers when he brought them out of Egypt. At the heart of that covenant is a promise of relationship: obey my voice and do all that I command you, God says, so you shall be my people, and I will be your God, that I may establish the oath I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey. And Jeremiah answers simply, Amen, LORD. The covenant's core is that mutual belonging: you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

The words at the center of the covenant are worth pausing over: you shall be my people, and I will be your God. This is the relationship God desires and offers, running through the whole of Scripture. It is not first a set of rules or a transaction, but a belonging: God claiming a people as his own, and giving himself to them as their God. To be his people is to belong to him, to be claimed, owned, cared for as his; and to have him as our God is to have him give himself to us, to be ours, our refuge and portion and Lord. The heart of the covenant is this mutual belonging, this relationship of God to his people and his people to God. There is wonder in this that we can grow too familiar with. That the God who made all things should say to a people, you shall be mine, and I will be yours, is an astonishing grace. He does not merely rule us from a distance or judge us from above; he binds himself to us in covenant, claims us as his own people, and gives himself to be our God. This is the relationship he offers: not distance, but belonging; not merely law, but love; a God who says, you are mine, and I am yours. And this belonging runs to the very end of Scripture, where the promise reaches its fulfillment: God's dwelling is with his people; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. What was spoken to Judah is God's abiding desire, fulfilled in Christ and consummated at the last: that we should be his people, and he our God. This changes how we understand our relationship to God. We belong to him; we are his people, claimed and cared for as his own; and he is ours, given to us as our God. Jeremiah answered the covenant with Amen, LORD; and the belonging it declares, you shall be my people and I will be your God, is the heart of what it means to be in relationship with the God who claims us as his own and gives himself to be ours.

Do I think of my relationship to God mainly as rules or transaction, missing the belonging at the heart of his covenant, or can I take hold of the wonder that God says to his people, you shall be mine, and I will be yours, claiming me as his own and giving himself to be my God, and answer as Jeremiah did, Amen, LORD, receiving the belonging he offers?