Peterson’s translation begins, “Keep me safe, O God, I’ve run for dear life to you. I say to God, ‘Be my Lord!’ Without you nothing makes sense. . .My choice is you, God, first and only.  And now I find I’m your choice.”

It appears to me that this is the correct order. Unfortunately, in contemporary American Christianity there seems to be a tendency to reverse things.  This to say that we need to initiate the quest for God’s forgiveness.  I am not the center of all things.  God is. He is lord, not me.  Like David, I need to be grateful that God will take me and make me his own. God must not be cast as being grateful that I have selected him.

The 16th Psalm ends with these words. “Ever since You took my hand, I\’m on the right way.”  True, but like most children I have pulled away from time to time, explored on my own, and strayed.  Thanks be to God that he has not given up on me.