The Lens of Eternity: A View from Akasia
By Harold Mawela
I. A Dark Night in Akasia: The Stone and the Mountain
I write these words from my study in Akasia, Pretoria. The night is quiet, but the silence is the heavy kind—the kind that follows a day of load-shedding, a week of worrying news, and a lifetime of “what ifs.” Just this afternoon, I spoke with a young man from our community. His eyes, usually bright with ambition, were dull with defeat. “What’s the point?” he asked. “I send out CVs like prayers, but the answer is always silence. The crime news is grim, the future feels fixed. Is this all there is?”
His question hung in the air, a familiar weight. It’s the weight of the temporal—the crushing focus on the immediate stone that stubs our toe, blinding us to the distant mountain we are called to climb. We live in a moment where, as one recent analysis put it, South Africans are “weary, yet increasingly hopeful”—weary of unemployment stubbornly near 32%, weary of crime that erodes security, yet hopeful because some lights, like load-shedding, have receded. But this very weariness can breed a dangerous myopia. We start to believe the immediate struggle is the whole story. We adapt, we survive, but we risk forgetting that we are made for more than adaptation. We are made for eternity.
This is where we need what I call the Lens of Eternity. Imagine, if you will, a telescope. Through its ordinary lens, you see only the dust on the windowsill. But turn it toward the heavens, and suddenly you are gazing at galaxies, at stars whose light has travelled for millennia. Your perspective is utterly recalibrated. The dust is still there, but it is now a speck against the backdrop of cosmic glory. So it is with our lives. The Lens of Eternity is the spiritual discipline of viewing our daily struggles—the job loss, the illness, the political anxiety, the personal failure—through the telescope of forever. It is the conscious choice to “look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
II. Defining the Terms: What is This “Eternity” We Speak Of?
Before we go further, let us define our terms with philosophical precision, for a vague hope is a weak hope. In Christian thought, eternity is not merely endless time. That is sempiternity—a sequence of moments stretching forward forever, like a railway line into infinity. Biblical eternity is something qualitatively different. It is the very life and mode of existence of God Himself. The great thinker Boethius defined it as “the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life”.
Think of a circle. We temporal beings are like points on the circumference, experiencing life moment by moment—past, present, future. God is the centre of the circle. He bears the same, immediate relation to every point on the circumference. For Him, my ancestor’s birth, my struggle today in Akasia, and the final triumph of Christ are all equally present. This is not a philosophical abstraction; it is the bedrock of our comfort. It means the God who holds your future is not waiting for it to happen. He is already there. Your “not yet” is His “now.” Your momentary affliction is, from this divine vantage point, already swallowed up in eternal glory.
This is the foundation of Paul’s audacious claim: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17, NIV). Light? Paul’s troubles included beatings, shipwrecks, and imprisonment. Momentary? They lasted for decades. He could only call them such because he was using the Lens of Eternity. He was comparing the fleeting suffering of the circumference to the everlasting weight of glory at the Centre.
III. The Contextual Challenge: Dismantling the Tyranny of the Temporal
Now, let us sound a prophetic alarm against the errors this lens corrects, errors particularly potent in our South African context.
Error 1: The Prosperity Gospel’s Temporal Trap. This teaching, so prevalent, argues that faith guarantees earthly health, wealth, and success. It baptises the temporal as the ultimate sign of God’s favour. But this is a theological fraud. It shackles hope to the very things Scripture calls “seen and temporary.” When the economy falters or illness strikes, this gospel offers only confusion and despair. It has no answer for the faithful believer in KwaMashu who remains unemployed, or the mother in Khayelitsha who buries a child. The Lens of Eternity confronts this directly: our ultimate treasure is not in rand and cents, but in heaven (Matthew 6:19-20). True prosperity is the soul’s flourishing in Christ, which can—and often does—coexist with earthly hardship.
Error 2: The Defeatist Resignation of “This Is All There Is.” This is the whisper of the weary soul: “The unemployment is 42.4%. Crime is endemic. Nothing will ever change.” This is a form of practical atheism. It lives as if the temporal reality is the final reality. It forgets the lesson of our own history: “The apartheid regime believed its order eternal; it crumbled”. If oppressive human systems are not eternal, how much less are our current troubles? The Lens of Eternity declares that this world is passing away (1 John 2:17). Our hope is not in a perfect South Africa, but in a perfect King who is making all things new.
Error 3: The Complacent Adaptation. We are a resilient people. We buy inverters, hire security, and navigate bureaucracy. But adaptation can become a cage. We can become so good at managing the darkness that we forget to long for the dawn. We settle for “incremental progress” as the ultimate goal. The Lens of Eternity refuses to let survival instincts replace holy ambition. It calls us to be responsible citizens while being hopeful pilgrims, always remembering we are “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
IV. The Argument from Reason and Longing
Let us formulate the core argument logically, anticipating a key objection.
Premise 1: Human beings possess a rational faculty and a profound, universal longing for permanence, meaning, and justice—a longing that finite, temporal realities cannot satisfy.
Premise 2: The Christian doctrine of eternity (as God’s timeless, perfect reality and our promised eternal life) provides a coherent object for this rational longing.
Premise 3: This eternal reality is authoritatively revealed in Scripture and made accessible through the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, which breaks the final tyranny of temporal death.
Conclusion: Therefore, adopting an eternal perspective is not wishful thinking but the most rational and satisfying response to the human condition. It is the only framework that gives lasting significance to our temporal struggles.
A Common Objection: “This is spiritual bypassing! My pain is real now. Telling me it’s ‘light and momentary’ feels like a dismissal.”
This is a serious charge, and we must meet it with empathy and truth. The eternal perspective does not trivialise present pain. Jesus wept at Lazarus’s tomb. God keeps record of every tear (Psalm 56:8). The Lens of Eternity does not deny the stone; it simply provides a larger landscape in which to place it. It says, “This pain is real, it is grievous, but it is not final. It is a chapter, not the whole book. And this chapter is being used by a Author who sees the final, glorious last page.” The pain is the pressure that produces the “eternal weight of glory”. We do not seek pain, but we can trust its purpose.
V. The South African Pilgrim: Living the Eternal Today
So, what does this look like in the streets of Akasia, Soweto, or Cape Town? It looks like hope with calloused hands.
It is the believer who, while diligently seeking a job, finds deeper identity in being a child of God, using unemployed hours to serve neighbours and pray for the nation.
It is the community that fights crime not only with alarms but with the radical, eternal logic of reconciliation and restoration, building the kingdom in miniature.
It is the citizen who engages politically with wisdom and vigour, yet whose ultimate confidence is not in any party or policy, but in the One who holds the nations in His hand.
It is you, reading this in your load-shedded home, choosing to worship in the darkness, your song a declaration that the Light of the World cannot be switched off by Eskom.
This is the costly discipleship of the eternal perspective. It fuels purpose. It soothes pain not with anaesthetic, but with the profound solace of a guaranteed ending. It recalibrates priorities: suddenly, the pursuit of God’s Kingdom and His righteousness jumps to the top of the agenda (Matthew 6:33).
VI. The Call: Fix Your Eyes
My friend, the stone at your toe is real. The mountain ahead is more real. The journey is arduous, but the homeland is sure. Jesus Christ, who entered our temporal pain, conquered death, and ascended to eternal glory, is both our pioneer and our promise. He is the Lens through whom we see the Father’s eternal love.
Therefore, I challenge you: Live with the end in mind. Let the Lens of Eternity be the first thing you reach for in the morning. When news alarms you, when disappointment weighs you down, when weariness whispers lies— deliberately refocus. Read Colossians 3:1-2. Remember Boethius’s centre of the circle. Recall that your “light and momentary affliction” is, even now, producing an eternal weight of glory.
Let this truth comfort you in Christ, convict you of misplaced hope, and give you unshakeable confidence. For when your gaze is fixed on the eternal, the temporal loses its power to overwhelm. You are not just a survivor of South Africa’s struggles. You are a pilgrim, a citizen of heaven, walking homeward. And nothing on this temporal path can rob you of the glory that awaits.
Look up, traveller. The mountain is in view.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-lens-of-eternity/id1506692775?i=1000745846700
Comments
Post a Comment