psalm 18 - i love you, lord - 18th week saturday

Psalm 18 is a prayer very personal to David.  It is a prayer that reveals to us David's knowledge and experience of God.  David begins with the phrase, "I love you, O Lord."  The word that David used for love is not the usual word used for God, it is not the special word used to describe one's love for God.  The word he used is ordinary, it actually means to fondle, to caress, to wrap ones arms around God, not in a formal embrace we usually see in formal occasions, but a coddling, like a baby wrapping his small arms around daddy's big legs.

And from this very short and informal I love you, David proceeds in describing his experience of God – nine titles, nine descriptions of who God is, each of which is preceded by the pronoun my -   “my strength,” “my rock,” “my fortress,” “my deliverer,” “my God,” “my mountain,” “my shield,” “my salvation,” and “my stronghold." This is a personal testament, a personal experience, a personal knowledge of who God is for David.  
In life we also need to compose our own Psalm 18.  It would be a failure on our part as religious when we are asked who God is and all we can answer are those provided by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  We need more than that knowledge.  We need to say "I love you Lord" in our own personal and peculiar way.  Before we die we need to write our own Psalm 18.