The earth here in Akasia cracks like a parched throat. Last summer, while Pretoria’s reservoirs dipped to 20% and our municipality rationed water, I planted a garden. My neighbors laughed—*“Why waste time on dirt that won’t drink?”* But I’d read Isaiah 54:1 the night before: *“Sing, O barren one… enlarge your tent.”* So I sowed marigold seeds in defiance, whispering prayers over each one. Weeks passed. Nothing. Then, after a rare drizzle, green shoots pierced the dust. Today, those marigolds blaze like tiny suns, a testament to what happens when faith digs its heels into despair.
Barrenness, I’ve learned, is not just a physical condition. It’s a spiritual posture. As South Africa grapples with rolling blackouts, political disillusionment, and a youth unemployment rate of 45%[^1], we’re a nation intimate with waiting. But how do we sing when the soil of our souls feels sterile?
### **Theology of the Unseen Harvest**
Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18:14 echoes in our clinics and prayer meetings. Last month, a friend in Soshanguve underwent her third round of IVF at Next Biosciences, a Johannesburg fertility clinic. The cost? R80,000—nearly a year’s salary for many. *“Is anything too hard for the Lord?”* she’d mutter, clutching her syringe of hormones. When the test finally showed two pink lines, we cried like Hannah at Shiloh.
Yet barrenness wears many masks. I think of the 24-year-old in Alexandra township, her arts degree gathering dust while she sells airtime. *“I feel empty,”* she told me. *“Like my future miscarried.”* Isaiah’s call to *“enlarge your tent”* confronts our shrinkage—of hope, of vision, of courage to believe God for more than survival.
### **The Idolatry of Immediate Fruit**
Modern Christianity often peddles a *vending machine theology*: insert prayer, receive blessing. But the Bible’s heroines—Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth—walked years-long marathons of trust. Consider the Ethiopian Parliament’s recent rejection of gamete donation laws. For couples like Dr. Solomon and his wife, faith now demands navigating the tension between medical science and cultural stigma. *When is barrenness a spiritual battle, and when is it simply biology?*
Here’s the rub: Faith without works is dead (James 2:17), but works without faith are performance. Last week, I met a pastor in Mamelodi who turned his church’s parking lot into a community garden. *“We pray for rain,”* he said, *“but we also installed drip irrigation.”* This is the dance of divine partnership—sowing seeds while staring down cumulonimbus clouds.
### **Confronting Our Barren Altars**
The church often worships at the altar of visible success. Mega-churches. Instagrammable miracles. But what of the woman quietly fostering orphans in Atteridgeville? The student protesting fee hikes at TUT? The single mother in Hammanskraal boiling maize porridge over a paraffin stove? Their faithfulness in the *“appointed time”* (Genesis 18:14) is a different kind of fruitfulness—slow, subterranean, sacred.
Let’s name our idols:
1. **The Cult of Busyness**: Mistaking activity for purpose.
2. **The Tyranny of Timelines**: *“Why am I not married/promoted/pregnant by 30?”*
3. **The Shame of Smallness**: Apologizing for *“only”* praying when God calls intercession the ultimate activism.
### **A Liturgy for the Barren**
This morning, I walked past a construction site in Menlyn. Workers sang as they mixed concrete—a Zulu hymn about rivers in the desert. Their chorus tangled with the beeping of trucks reversing. *This is our song*, I realized. Not denial of the drought, but defiance within it.
**Practical Resurrection:**
- **Sow Ridiculously**: Volunteer at that NGO. Write that book. Love that “difficult” relative.
- **Rebuke Stagnation**: Replace *“I can’t”* with *“El Shaddai can.”*
- **Celebrate Micro-Miracles**: A child’s laugh. A stranger’s kindness. A marigold in August.
### **Prayer from the Cracked Earth**
*Father, You who split seas and wombs,
We bring our empty places—
Wombs, wallets, dreams.
Teach us to sing Isaiah’s song
While holding Sarah’s promise.
Make our lives altars where
Barrenness bows to resurrection.
In the name of the One who turned water to wine
And tombs to tunnels of light—
Amen.*
**Final Thought**:
The same God who parted the Red Sea sends winter rains to the Highveld. Our task? Keep planting. Keep singing. Keep enlarging tents in a nation where hope too often goes homeless. Your harvest—seen and unseen—is coming. After all, even deserts bloom when touched by the promise of rain.
[^1]: Statistics South Africa, Q1 2025 Labour Force Survey.
*Inspired by conversations at Jakaranda Child Welfare, the resilience of #FeesMustFall alumni, and the woman who sells vetkoek outside Akasia Mall—her laughter a daily psalm.*
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