My cousin Mary sent me this photo of our grandpa, Earl Harms, who died fourteen years ago. This particular photograph resonates with my memory of my beloved grandpa so clearly. Grandpa built houses. Not for money, for people. Houses for his family. Houses for his friends. He built my parents’ house. He built Mary’s parents’ house. The first house he built for he and my grandma, he dug out the basement with a shovel. This photo shows him years later, when he had a backhoe to work with.

My grandpa knew how to work hard. He also knew how to enjoy rest. Perhaps that’s why this photo reminds me of him so much. It’s Grandpa at work and rest. Specifically, Grandpa taking a rest from work. Everything about him – his stance, the outlook of his eyes, the contentment on his face – says, “It is good. The work is good. The rest is good.”

Throughout the past fourteen years, I’ve been blessed to have Grandpa “visit” me in my dreams now and then. I call them visits because he isn’t just a part of my dream stories, he appears unexpectedly. Every time I’m astonished to see him and I ask, “Grandpa, where have you been all this time?” And in every dream, Grandpa’s response to me – in his smile and sparkling eyes – is the same: “It is good.”

There’s a quote from Wendell Berry in his book Jayber Crow:

I am a man who has hoped, in time, that his life, when poured out at the end, would say, “Good-good-good-good-good!,” like a gallon jug of the prime local spirit.

Much of the time I feel worn out, used up, by life. But, when I think of this quote and the way my grandpa lived his life, I’m inspired to see things with new eyes. It’s not that I’m worn out; I’m poured out. There’s a difference, and that difference is in whether or not I see what my grandpa saw: That it is good.

It is worth being poured out for that which is good.