Book Review: The Orphan, The Widow & Me
Few stories have as much potential to change the way we live as those where God redeems deep heartache for His glorious, eternal purposes.
Such is the case with JT Olson’s The Orphan, the Widow & Me.
When 12-year-old JT became an orphan after a horrific accident, he couldn’t possibly have understood what God had in store–how the God he did not yet know planned to redeem every bit of the hurt, grief, confusion, and loneliness to impact thousands of families, children, and widows for generations to come. But that’s often how God chooses to work–in the details we don’t fully comprehend.
As The Orphan, the Widow & Me demonstrates clearly page after riveting page, often God delights to draw the straightest lines from our deepest griefs to our greatest opportunities.
As JT grew, so too did his heart for the vulnerable. His own journey of adopting his daughter, Grace, in China gave him deeper insight into the emotional and financial hurdles for adopting families, specifically, and he knew he needed to do something. Burdened for the world’s most easily forgotten, he set out to create a solution.
39 years after JT lost his parents, he started Both Hands Foundation for the purpose of helping widows and orphans simultaneously.
Both Hands Foundation
Today, Both Hands exists to help Christian families fund their adoptions by coordinating a service project to fix up a widow’s home.Both Hands’ vision is to see the day when finances are not an obstacle for Christian families who are led to adopt, while simultaneously serving every widow in need of home repairs. The foundation has raised over $7.5 million to date, and it’s just getting started.
The book is encouraging, engaging, and impactful, but it’s more than that. It’s a poignant reminder that every part of our pain has a purpose.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
–1 Corinthians 4:17-18
Read the book and be encouraged.
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