Yesterday we began some reflections on God, and I was trying to remind us of the difference between

the Creator and the creature. We are, as the hymn says, frail children of dust and feeble as frail.

We grasp the privilege of knowing God then, not by making Him small, but when we realize

the sheer greatness of the one we've come to know.

But what's involved in knowing God, knowing who He is, and knowing what he's like?

We can come to know Him only because God is condescended to reveal Himself to us, and because,

in addition, He is made as his image and likeness, giving us, built-in receptors that enable us to know him.

He is the original person.

He is made us as image persons, kind of miniature likenesses of himself, persons of a different

genre from him, but who have been created by him to know him and love him.

And one way we come to know and love each other as persons is through what we might call our attributes, and the same is true with God.

Just to be clear about what we are talking about here when we speak of

attributes, we don't mean the noun attribute as though it meant the same as the verb attribute.

For example, you may know that in some hymn books, the lovely 16th century hymn, I greet

thee who my sure Redeemer art is attributed to John Calvin.

For all practical purposes, attributed there means maybe he wrote it, maybe he didn't,

but some people attribute it to him. But when we speak about the attributes of God,

we're not talking about characteristics we think

he has, but he might not have. We're talking about characteristics he displays. We're talking

about what scripture teaches us about him. In the same way, we have attributes. We're hopefully

kind and trustworthy and patient and so on.

But there's a difference, isn't there?

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