The Chronicles of Load-Shedding . Harold Mawela

The Blueprint in the Mind Scripture: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2) I. The Architect's Secret Let me tell you about a Thursday morning last month—the kind of Highveld morning where Pretoria's jacarandas throw purple shadows across Lynnwood Road and the smell of kota from the spaza shop drifts through my Akasia study window. I sat there, coffee going cold, staring at a WhatsApp message that stopped me cold. It was from my neighbour, Mr. Dlamini—retired principal, pillar of the community, a man who'd spent forty years building schools and shaping young minds. His son had just been arrested for tender fraud. Forty million rand. Municipal contracts. A house in Waterkloof now under threat of forfeiture. "Pastor," he wrote, "I don't recognise the boy I raised. Where did we go wrong?" And sitting there in the morning light, with the sound of taxis hooting on Brits Road,...

Title: The Anchor In The Fog Scripture: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:18) By Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria There is a particular kind of fog that rolls in over the Hennops River valley just before dawn. It blankets the highway, swallowing the taillights of the cars crawling home to Soshanguve, to Mabopane, to Wonderpark. You cannot drive through that fog by feeling your way. You cannot close your eyes and hope the tarmac knows your name. You drive by the anchor—the white line painted on the road. You trust the line, even when you cannot see the destination. This is the geometry of love. And we have forgotten the mathematics of it. Let us define our terms clearly, lest we build a house on the marsh of sentiment. The world, in its dizzying wisdom, has sold us a lie wrapped in rose petals and backed by a string orchestra. It tells us that love is a feeling. It tells us that love is the flutter in the chest, the heat in the...

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...

Title: The Unseen Architect: Why Your Greatest Frustration is the Blueprint of Your Destiny Scripture: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) Let me tell you a story. Just last week, I was sitting in my study in Akasia, the Pretoria skyline a distant haze, scrolling through news that felt like a spiritual weight. Load-shedding schedules flickered on my screen alongside headlines of political noise and economic anxiety. My own heart, however, was heavy with a quieter tension—a project I’d felt God place in my spirit seemed stalled, blocked at every turn by lack, by doubt, by sheer logistical impossibility. It felt like trying to build a cathedral with a teaspoon. I sighed, a sound drowned out by the familiar hum of my inverter kicking in. And in that mundane, frustrating moment, the Spirit whispered a truth so profound it rearranged my perspective: Your frustration is not a sign o...

Title: The Water You Carry: When Yesterday’s Well Runs Dry. Let us share the shade of this old baobab. The sun is new, yet I see you carry the dust of yesterday’s long road on your shoulders. I hear a familiar sigh in your spirit—the sigh of one who has drawn from a well only to find it silted with the sand of old struggles, cyclical fatigue, and frustrations that echo like a broken drum. The scripture whispers a truth our ancestors knew in their bones: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” But how do we perceive the new stream when our eyes are fixed on the cracked earth of the old season? I. The Three Layers of Fatigue: Soil, Seed, and Sky There is a tiredness that sits in the muscles. There is a tiredness that settles in the mind. And there is a tiredness that seeps into the spirit, convincing you that the map you hold is the only territory that exists. This is the trinity of exhaustion: the pers...