Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference

by Desmond Tutu

We are temples of the Holy Spirit. Not just our bodies but our very selves, the essence of our being, is the place in which the Spirit resides. The Spirit within us calls out to God to find its place and its home. Saint Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.” Being made for God means, for us, that anything less than God will not suffice. We are hungry for God, but we don’t always know that it is God that we crave. Often we are like the woman who stands at the open refrigerator door at three o’clock in the morning knowing that she is hungry for something but not knowing what it is that she needs, so she shuts the mouth of her hunger with something that merely stupefies but does not satisfy. We stand around feeling a vague dissatisfaction and having no idea of what it is that we actually want. So we shut the mouth of our desire for God with busyness, or with things—gadgets, gizmos, trinkets, and treasures—and emerge at the other end recognizing that what we have is not what we need. We yearn for God, yet we feel lost on the way to our own hearts. We want to live lives of goodness. We long for a teacher and adviser close enough to speak the words of wisdom to guide us. Who is this teacher, this adviser? Many can help us along the way, but in the end it is only God whose advice we really need to hear.