2019. Jacob’s Answer to Parental Despair: The Olive Tree and the Antichrist By Joseph Grenny · July 7, 2022, Meridian Magazine.
Jacob’s Answer to Parental Despair: The Olive Tree and the Antichrist By Joseph Grenny · July 7, 2022 In the past seven years I have loved and lost hundreds of precious sons and daughters. And I have seen inexplicable miracles in the lives of hundreds more. I know what it means to have “joy and great hopes… that they would walk in the paths of righteousness” on one day, and to feel the searing agony of seeing them throw it all away on the next. Through it all I’ve learned that almost all losses are temporary, and that much of my parental misery comes from my misunderstanding of redemptive labor. My extended family lives at an unusual school called The Other Side Academy. Adult men and women come to us after decades of homelessness, scores of arrests and after perpetrating innumerable acts of evil. They live with us for 2-4 years. We labor with them as they struggle through confronting monstrous demons. I’ve watched them find rewarding careers, reunite with abandoned children, and