The Chronicles of Load-Shedding . Harold Mawela

The Sermon of Your Silence: When Actions Preach Louder Than Words The Unspoken Sermon The elderly woman in Mamelodi sits on an upturned crate, her gnarled hands shelling peas into a plastic bowl. She has never stood behind a pulpit or written a theological treatise. Yet, every morning at dawn, she places a second crate outside her door for the young man from down the dirt road who lost his parents to the great sickness. She never speaks of this. But when he passes, he does not see a old woman shelling peas—he sees a living parable of God's persistent care, a tangible expression that he has not been forgotten by heaven or earth. This is the sermon that needs no microphone. This past week, as our nation grappled with the sobering reports of nearly 1,000 women raped and 137 murdered in a single quarter , and as our political discourse often echoes with division, a profound question has haunted my quiet moments: If my life were stripped of all religious jargon, all Christian clichés, a...

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let me speak to you from my home here in Akasia, in the northern stretches of this city of Tshwane, a place built on old agricultural holdings, now buzzing with life . I want to talk about a poison many of us drink, a prison many of us inhabit. I want to talk about the costly, liberating war of forgiveness. The Prison We Inhabit Just the other day, I was driving through the rolling hills of Amandasig, with the Magaliesberg standing firm in the distance . Yet, the beauty outside my window was a stark contrast to the turmoil I felt inside. I was wrestling with a deep hurt, a wound inflicted by someone I trusted. The familiar, bitter taste of resentment was on my tongue. I was, as the saying goes, drinking a poison, hoping the other person would die . My soul felt like that mini-bus taxi I read about, the one that tragically plunged down an embankment in KwaZulu-Natal . My thoughts were crashing, my peace was shattered. I had become the prisoner, lo...

The Teaspoon and the Ocean: A South African Lesson in Sacred Obedience Here in Akasia, the summer sun bakes the earth to a brittle terracotta. From my window, I watch a neighbour trying to water his vast garden with a single, leaking hose. He runs frantically from one wilting petunia to the next, a picture of frantic exhaustion. It’s a futile fight against the immense need. And I see myself in him. I see all of us in him. How often have you stood before the ocean of problems in your life, in our nation, and felt the crushing weight of your own teaspoon? The need is too vast. The waves of crisis—load-shedding that plunges our homes into darkness, the relentless news of gender-based violence that shatters our communities, the deep poverty that leaves 23 percent of our children in severe food poverty —these are not mere puddles. They are a roaring sea. And the Lord whispers to my spirit, “Harold, you are trying to drain the ocean with a teaspoon.” The Tyranny of the Telescope We operate i...

  The Unseen Altar: Where God Forges Spiritual Depth in an Age of Instant Glory The Night the Lights Went Out The familiar, dreaded silence fell first. The hum of the refrigerator ceased mid-cycle. The bright screen of my phone, filled with the curated highlights of a dozen ministries, went black. Load-shedding had come to Akasia again. In the sudden, thick darkness, I fumbled for a candle. As the small flame took hold, it didn't just illuminate the room; it illuminated a truth. We spend so much energy trying to stay visible in the grid, terrified of the dark, when God so often uses the dark to show us the only light that truly matters. This is the tension we modern South Africans, and indeed all modern believers, must navigate. We live in a world that screams, "Your value is your visibility!" Social media metrics, church attendance numbers, and public influence are the new currencies of success. Yet, into this noise, the quiet, unwavering voice of Scripture speaks a coun...

My friend, if you have ever scrolled through your social media feed and felt a pang of inadequacy, as if your entire life is a behind-the-scenes blooper reel compared to everyone else’s award-winning highlight film, then this word is for you. I write to you from my own context, here in Akasia, where the vibrant, sometimes chaotic, rhythm of South African life provides the backdrop for my own walk of faith. 📜 The Ancient Race in a Modern World The Apostle Paul, a man who knew a thing or two about hardship, once used an image his readers would instantly understand: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). In our modern South African context, we have twisted this. We think the prize is for the one with the most Instagrammable victory, the fastest start, or the loudest cheer squad. We have forgotten that the race is not against the person in the lane beside us; it is against the lies of t...

Seeing in the Dark: The Unseen War for Your Perspective My house went dark last night. Not just a flicker, but a deep, load-shedding Stage 6 darkness that swallows the hum of the fridge and the glow of the router light. My immediate world shrank to the circle of light from my phone torch. In that small pool of light, I could see my frustration, the clock ticking away the precious minutes of productivity, the palpable anxiety about the food spoiling in the freezer. This, right here, felt like my entire reality: limited, frustrating, and uncertain. But then, I did something simple. I walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. And there, stretched across the Akasia sky, was a breathtaking canopy of stars, sharper and more brilliant than I had seen in months. The very darkness that had blinded me inside had unveiled a majestic glory outside that was always there, but which the city lights normally obscured. My friends, are you not weary of living by the dim, flickering torchlight of...