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 persistent, the patterned, and the profound.
You see it in our beautiful, struggling land. We drag the heavy sacks of past disappointments—load-shedding that darkens not just homes but horizons, promises that rust like forgotten tools, the nagging doubt that tomorrow is just a renamed yesterday. We dwell there. We build a hut in that past, and we call it realism. But I tell you, a memory can become a cage. And a cycle can become a curse.
A Story of Two Villages:
Once, two villages faced a great drought. The first village, Ditlhokwa la Bogologolo (The Well of the Past), rallied around their ancient, sacred well. They prayed over it, cleaned it, dug around it deeper and deeper. Their entire identity became the guardians of the dry hole. The second village, Maiteko a Metsi (The Pursuit of Water), sent out scouts. The elders said, “The river does not weep for its old path. It finds a new one.” One scout, a young woman with eyes on the horizon, noticed a line of green ants marching away from the dry riverbed. She followed. Over a ridge, she found not a grand river, but a seep of fresh water from a forgotten spring. It was a new thing, small but sure.
Where is your attention? On defending the dry well, or on reading the ants?
II. The Hidden Door in the Dead End: A Modern Parable
Let me tell you of Thandi, a woman from Soshanguve with hands that could weave magic. She made beautiful baskets, but the market was crowded, the road to the city costly, and her profits were thin—a dead end. One evening, frustrated, she scrolled on her phone, seeing only others’ success. Then, her data ran out. In the silence, she heard her aunt’s old story about the isicholo hat, how its shape told a story of home. A new pattern sparked. What if her baskets could tell our stories? Not just carry things, but carry heritage? She began weaving patterns of Ndebele art, shapes from San rock paintings, and symbols of unity. She did not just sell a basket; she gifted a lineage. She found the hidden door. The dead end was not in the market; it was in the story she was telling herself about her own art.
This is the new timeline of grace. It is not a wish. It is a decision to perceive differently. It is the intellectual rigor of asking: “What if my obstacle is not a wall, but clay for a new pot?”
III. The Practical Implementation: Silencing Yesterday’s Echo
How do we step onto this new path? We must perform three conscious acts of stewardship:
1. The Ritual of Release (Letting the River Flow): Each morning, before the world’s noise intrudes, take three quiet breaths. With the first, acknowledge yesterday’s struggle. With the second, thank it for its lesson. With the third, release it. Say aloud: “I am not bound by the tide that has passed.” You are not erasing history; you are ceasing to rent it space in your present mind. It is the simple, profound power of declaring your current sovereignty.
2. The Discipline of Perception (Reading the New Seasons): For one week, carry a small notebook. Label it “Signs of New Water.” Your only task is to note three small things each day that worked, that sparked curiosity, that felt like a moment of unexpected flow—a smooth conversation, a solved problem, a glimpse of beauty, a helpful article on your phone about a new venture. You are training your eye to see the sprouts, not just the stumps. This is how you perceive the “new thing” springing up.
3. The Audacity of the Small Start (Carving the New Path): Identify one idea, one project, one relationship that feels “stuck.” Now, ask the Socratic question rooted in our own soil: “If this were not a problem, but a seed, what is the first drop of water it needs?” Not a flood. A drop. A single phone call. A 30-minute sketch. A honest sentence to a colleague. The new timeline is built not by giant leaps, but by consistent, forward-focused steps. It is the relentless pursuit of the green ants.
Conclusion: The Unfinished Pot
My friend, I am a man of Akasia. I see the helicopters over Pretoria, the swift rush of modern life. I also see the red earth that holds the rain. The wisdom is in the synthesis. Your new beginning is your spiritual inheritance because it is your human inheritance—the capacity to choose your focus, to shape your narrative, to find the new water source.
Do not be the leader, the entrepreneur, the parent, the dreamer who builds a monument over a dry well. Be the scout. The potter’s clay is not nostalgic about its old lumpy form; it yields to the new shape. You are the potter and the clay. This week, this very day, carries a unique signature of favor. But you must sign your name next to it with an act of courageous, forward-focused faith.
What well have you been praying over that has long run dry? And what ridge are you being called to climb, to find the seep of a new beginning?
Go in pursuit of your water. The ancestors are not in the dry well; they are in the wind at your back, urging you toward the spring.
Prayer: Great Nurturer, Source of all streams, I receive this day’s unique grace. I silence yesterday’s echoing drum. I still my heart to perceive the new rhythm you are playing. Guide my feet to the new water. Let my hands be bold in shaping the new clay. Amen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/your-new-beginning-is-not-a-wish/id1506692775?i=1000748849428
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