Title: The Alchemy of Affliction Text: Philippians 3:10 By Harold Mawela Akasia, Pretoria I was sitting in my study late one night, the kind of Pretoria quiet where you can hear the geyser ticking and the occasional bark of a nervous dog. Load shedding had hit again—Stage Four, because of course—and the only light in the room came from a single candle and the pale blue glow of my cellphone. I watched the flame dance, and a thought settled on me like a winter blanket: Fire does not only destroy. It also purifies. We are, all of us, living in a furnace right now. Look at the headlines. We read about another child found in a drain in Tshwane. We see the statistics on gender-based violence that make your stomach turn. We watch the politicking and the looting and the decay of what we thought was a promised land. The economy groans. Friendships fracture. Marriages grow cold. And in the quiet of our own hearts, we nurse wounds that no one else can see. The question is not whether you will pas...
Title: The Mirror of Your Mandate 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 (NKJV) The Man in the Glass I saw my face in the darkened screen of my laptop this morning. Load-shedding had stolen the light again—Stage 4, they called it, as if we are counting plagues now instead of power failures. The reflection stared back at me: a man in Akasia, surrounded by the familiar hum of neighbourhood generators, sitting in the half-darkness of a city that cannot keep its promises. And in that dim reflection, the Holy Spirit asked me a question I could not escape: Who are you trying to impress? Let us define our terms clearly, for confusion here is fatal. A mandate is not merely a job. It is not a job title, a salary bracket, or the size of your YouTube following. Your mandate is the specific assignment the living God downloaded into your spirit before the foundation of th...