Good is Only Good in God

So the copy of Confessions that I have is a different translation than anyone in the class has so you'll have to bear with me with quotes and chapter numbers. However, when I was reading the section titled in my book as Other Friends, relatively near the middle of book four, something struck me when he spoke of material things. The section started off with him explaining that what we ought to love in material things is their maker, not the thing itself.

"But hard it will be, for good reason, if you love things derived from him as deprived of him."

This statement was very interesting to me in how it brought us back to the fact that God is the only absolute good, and the source of all other good in creation. Even when we see people who are incredibly passionate about God and live their lives in light of that, we tend to view them in awe when it is solely because of God working in them that we see good come from them. This is something that proves very relevant to us in many different situations. Even in marriage, for example, so many people today approach what was intended to be a lifelong commitment to another person without the one crucial component that makes that possible, God.

P.S. I commented on Hannah Burch's "Having Faith"