You Are Not Bread: The Grace of Being Versus The Grind of Doing Akasia, Pretoria — The Morning the Spar Queue Became My Pulpit Brothers and sisters, let me tell you about last Thursday. There I was, standing in the interminable queue at the Karenpark Spar—that peculiar South African purgatory where time goes to die between the checkouts and the braai pack section. The woman ahead of me, designer handbag gleaming like fool's gold, was on her Bluetooth earpiece, voice dripping with the particular anxiety of Pretoria's aspirational class. "No, no, no—tell him I need the tender documents by three! If we don't secure this contract, the board will think I'm failing. I must deliver. I must prove myself. I must..." Her voice faded, but the word hung in the air like municipal smog over the Highveld. Must. Must. Must. I wanted to tap her shoulder. I wanted to whisper what Jesus thundered to the bread-crazed crowd by Galilee: “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for m...
The Mirror They Carry: Why Your Light Exposes Their Darkness The lights went out suddenly. Again. Eskom se dinges, we muttered in the dark of our Akasia home, the familiar frustration rising. My phone screen glowed, a tiny square of light in the swallowed room. Scrolling, I saw not updates, but accusations. A pastor denounced for prosperity. A public figure torn apart for an old tweet. A neighbour’s WhatsApp group alight with venom over a boundary wall. In that load-shedding blackout, I saw a deeper darkness: our furious human habit of projecting our own inner chaos onto the nearest available screen—another person’s life. They hated Joseph because of his dream. Read it slowly: “They hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.” The offence was not his action, but his vision. His clarity became their indictment. His light did not create their darkness; it revealed it. And what is revealed, is often reviled. Here is the practical, paradoxical law you must etch on you...