No running on the poolside!

The big lesson I've been learning this term has been all about not running away...
Right now I'm listening to a song called "When your mind's made up" from the film "Once" and there is this lyric in it that just sticks with me: "so, your just like everybody else, when your shit falls you just run away..." and it's had me thinking about the way I love to run away from the challenges in my life...just like everybody else but am I called to live differently?

Like it's always easier to be the one to leave a place then have someone leave you behind...and often this is the route I take. I love to leave everything behind and go spend 3 months each summer working at a camp in Canada but that's not right for me this year, I have no crazy 12 week Uni holiday I can use up...I have a job!

And boy did I want to run away from a work situ...get a new job, new people that I work better with but does that reflect how God does relationships? The Bible is full of God issuing covenants with his people-everlasting promises to stick it out through thick and thin....He promises He wont bail on us and He doesnt want us bailing on each other.

In my journal I've called my desire to run away my "divorce mentality"...when things get tough just call it quits but God hasnt called us to this and though it hurts to stick it out that's where we grow. If we moved everytime we disagreed with someone those aspects of our character that God wants to smooth off would never get seen to.

Isn't this what true community is? To stick it out with people as you grow together following our Father's covenant heart...

"I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me (... not run away!)."
Jeremiah 32:40