I was reading a book by Father Raniero Cantalamessa OFMCap. What he said at one point struck me particularly:

Poverty, chastity, and obedience are not a renunciation – or worse, a condemnation – of a created good, but a rejection of the evil that has come to overlay the good. Therefore they are, by definition, a proclamation of the original goodness of created things. They are a way of imitating the Word of God Who, by taking flesh, took on all that belongs to human nature, but did not take on sin (cf. Heb 4:15).

He is talking about the evangelical counsels. But the words ring true for everything. Every act by which we say no to a legitimate good – even something as tiny as a bit of sugar we’d like to add to a drink or an extra cup of tea – is a proclamation of the One we want to belong to. And it’s not because we hold anything good in contempt. It is because we are dazzled by the Good that became one of us, a human being.