The Still Pool in the Flood: A Testament from Akasia
The Waters That Broke the Bridge
Last Thursday morning, the rain on my tin roof in Akasia was a relentless, martial drumroll. It wasn't the gentle, life-giving pula of our prayers, but a torrent that seemed intent on unmaking creation. My phone buzzed not with messages, but with alerts: the Apies River had burst its banks in central Pretoria; the N1 was a snarled, watery graveyard of cars. Further north, in our beloved Limpopo, a catastrophe was unfolding. News footage showed landscapes I knew—verdant fields, humble homesteads—obliterated into a churning, brown sea. President Ramaphosa stood amidst the ruin, speaking of houses "wiped away from the face of the earth". The official count climbed: 30, then 70, then over 100 souls lost across our region, with hundreds of thousands displaced. This was not weather; it was a weeping of the skies, a palpable groan of creation.
In the face of such desolation, our human impulse is to stir. To demand answers, to assign blame, to do something. We scramble for the philosophical bucket to bail out the theological boat. We ask, with raw urgency: "God, where are You in this flood?" This question—born in the muddy waters of Mpumalanga and the shattered homes of Mozambique—is the crucible in which our faith is tested. It is here, in the tension between God's sovereign goodness and creation's tangible brokenness, that we must learn the discipline of the still pool. For impatience clouds the water; patience lets the sediment settle so you can see clearly.
Patience as Philosophy: Loving God with the Mind in a World of Pain
In our suffering, we are all philosophers. We ask ultimate questions that science cannot answer: What is the meaning of this? Where is justice? Where is God?. Some in the church grow nervous at the word "philosophy," recalling Tertullian's famous quip, "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?". They fear that clear, logical thinking about God is a foreign, faith-diluting import. My friends, this is a profound error. To love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind is a divine command (Mark 12:30). A faith that fears thought is a faith that fears the very faculty God gave us to know Him more deeply.
The great doctors of the early church understood this. They did not see "theology" and "philosophy" as warring domains but as a single, integrated pursuit of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—all found in Christ. When the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) defended the full divinity of Jesus Christ, they used precise philosophical terms like homoousios (of the same substance) to protect a biblical truth from distortion. They used the tools of human reason to safeguard the revelation of divine mystery, not to replace it. This is our model: not a blind, irrational leap into the dark, but a reasonable step into the light God has revealed, using every good gift of the intellect He has provided.
Therefore, when the floodwaters rise, our faith response is not to abandon reason but to engage it more deeply, guided by Scripture. A common, heart-rending objection arises: "If God is all-good and all-powerful, how can He permit such evil?" Let us reason together:
· Premise 1: The Bible reveals God as both perfectly loving and sovereignly powerful (1 John 4:8; Psalm 115:3).
· Premise 2: The Bible also reveals that human sin has fractured all of creation, subjecting it to "futility" and "bondage to decay" (Romans 8:20-21).
· Premise 3: Natural disasters like floods are a manifestation of this created order groaning under the weight of the cosmic brokenness initiated by human rebellion.
· Conclusion: Therefore, God's present permission of natural evil does not negate His goodness or power; rather, it places it within the larger biblical narrative of a good creation marred by sin and a faithful God actively working through Christ to redeem and restore it (Romans 8:18-23).
God is not the author of the flood, but He is the Lord who walks with us through the deepest waters. His clock keeps perfect time. The answer to "Why?" is often not a philosophical proposition but a personal presence: "I am with you" (Isaiah 43:2). Forcing an answer before its time is like picking unripe fruit—bitter and wasteful. We must wait for the fog to lift. The revelation that comes with divine timing carries with it the peace and power to walk it out.
The Ancestor Who Is More: A Prophetic Word to African Christology
In our search for a God who is near in suffering, many of my African brothers and sisters have found profound comfort in viewing Jesus Christ as our Great Ancestor. There is a beautiful, intuitive resonance here. Like an ancestor, Jesus is a mediating figure who has gone before us. He lived a full human life, died, and passed into the spiritual realm, remaining present and concerned with His family. For a people for whom community and lineage are the fabric of existence, this makes Emmanuel—"God with us"—feel intimately close. It contextualises the gospel, making Christ not a foreign Western deity but the fulfiller of our deepest spiritual longings for connection and mediation.
But here we must sound a prophetic alarm against a subtle but dangerous syncretism. We must biblically dismantle the error of reducing Christ to a category, even a cherished one. The Scriptures declare unequivocally that while Jesus is like an ancestor in His mediation, He is infinitely more.
Let us examine the evidence through the lens of Philippians 2:5-11:
· Pre-existence & Nature: Ancestors begin their existence at birth. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son, existing in the very form of God before time began (Philippians 2:6). He is not a glorified human; He is God who took on humanity.
· Death & Purpose: Ancestors die a natural death. Jesus died a sacrificial, atoning death, the just for the unjust, as an act of obedient love to rescue sinners (Philippians 2:8; 1 Peter 3:18).
· Post-Mortem State: Ancestors remain, in a sense, among the dead. Jesus Christ rose bodily, decisively defeating death itself (Philippians 2:9).
· Present Position & Authority: Ancestors mediate from within the created order. Jesus ascended to the right hand of God the Father, where He reigns with all authority and makes perfect, constant intercession for us (Philippians 2:9-11). He does not just carry messages; He grants salvation.
· Worship: Ancestors are venerated. Jesus Christ is to be worshipped as Lord of all, receiving the homage due to Yahweh alone (Philippians 2:10-11; Isaiah 45:23).
Therefore, Jesus is not merely an ancestor; He is the Christ, the unique and only mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). To slot Him into the ancestor category is to shrink the ocean of His divinity into a culturally-comfortable pond. It is to trade the infinite, saving God-man for a finite, tribal figure. True liberation is found not in making God like us, but in being remade in the image of the God who became like us, yet without sin.
The Costly Clarity of Patient Trust
So what does this mean for us, here in Akasia, as the clean-up begins and the rains still threaten? It means our greatest clarity is born not in the rush to explain all things, but in patient, thoughtful trust.
This patient trust is active, not passive. It is the police and private security working on precise intelligence to dismantle criminal networks in our own community, fighting for order against chaos. It is the neighbour sharing a generator, the church organising a donation drive for Limpopo, the quiet prayer in a damp house. It is using the mind God gave us to understand His world and His Word more deeply, to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).
It is recognizing that in a world of floods and crime and suffering, our hope is not in a fragile philosophy or a limited ancestor, but in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Logos—the rational, ordering Principle of the universe who became flesh. In Him, the fury of the storm meets the calm of its Creator. In Him, the gap between a holy God and a broken people is forever bridged by a cross and an empty tomb.
Let the muddy waters of your doubt and grief settle. Do not stir them with frantic, bitter demands. Wait on the Lord. Be still. In the settled stillness of patient trust, you will not see a simple answer, but you will see the stars—the unshakeable, sovereign promises of God shining in the dark. And you will see the face of the One who walks on the water, who calms the sea, and who says to you, even now, "Take heart. I have overcome the world" (John 16:33).
Harold Mawela writes from his home in Akasia, Pretoria, where he watches the summer storms gather over the Magaliesberg, a constant reminder of God's terrible power and His merciful patience.
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