Title: The Nearness That Needs No Explanation
Subtitle: Why Your Brokenness Is Not a Barricade but a Beacon
By Harold Mawela | Akasia, Pretoria
I. The Crash That Taught Me to Listen
The screeching tyres on the N1 near Akasia last winter sounded exactly like my heart breaking. One moment I was navigating the potholes we've all learned to dodge—those craterous scars on our provincial roads that the newspapers say claim a dozen lives monthly—and the next, my car was performing a grotesque ballet with a barrier. Metal screamed. Glass splintered into a thousand glistening tears. And in that suspended second between control and chaos, I felt the strangest sensation: peace. Not the peace of survival, but the peace of absolute, utter helplessness .
As I sat there, airbag dust settling on my lips like ash on a Ash Wednesday forehead, I waited for God to arrive. I composed my prayer: "Lord, thank You for protecting me. Thank You for Your hedge of protection. I bind the spirit of accident..." But before the theological formalities could leave my mouth, before I could straighten my tie and present my best self to the Almighty, I felt Him. Not in the wind. Not in the fire. In the silence of a crumpled chassis, He was simply there.
That experience, my friends, became my unwitting doctorate in the theology of divine proximity. And it taught me this: pain lies. It whispers that God has withdrawn, that heaven has gone silent, that your brokenness has built a wall. But brokenness is not a barrier—it is a beacon.
II. Define Your Terms: What Does "Near" Really Mean?
Let us anchor our minds before we engage our hearts. When the psalmist declares, "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted" (Psalm 34:18), what is the nature of this closeness?
Common Objection: "But Pastor, if God is so close, why do I feel so alone? Why does the mattress soak my tears while the ceiling returns only my own sobs? If He is near, where is His hand? Where is His fix?"
Let us build a syllogism to dismantle this despair:
1. Premise One: God is love (1 John 4:8). Love, by its nature, is not performative; it is present. It does not arrive with marching bands; it arrives with a quiet "I am here."
2. Premise Two: The Hebrew word for "close" in Psalm 34:18 (qarov) implies intimate proximity, not transactional intervention. It is the nearness of a mother to a feverish child at 2 a.m.—she cannot stop the fever, but she can wet the cloth. She cannot silence the cough, but she can hold the hand.
3. Premise Three: Pain creates a vacuum. The world rushes out of a collapsing life. Friends fade. Phones stop ringing. Even your own strength evacuates like tenants from a burning building. But vacuums, in the physics of the Spirit, are not empty—they are invitations.
Conclusion: God does not run from ruins; He runs toward them. A crushed spirit does not repel the Almighty—it attracts Him. He is not distant in your darkness; He is deepest in it.
III. The Idol Maker's Heart and the Broken Pieces
Last Tuesday, I walked down Church Street in Pretoria. You know Church Street—where the jacarandas bloom purple praise in spring, and where the craftsmen sit with their carved animals and ancestral figures. I watched a tourist haggle over a wooden rhino. "This will bring protection to my home," she was told. And I thought: There but for grace go we all.
We are all idol makers. We carve images of how our lives should look. We shape the wood of our expectations into the form of a successful career, a faithful spouse, healthy children, a retirement annuity that actually survives load-shedding. And then the crash comes—literal or metaphorical—and the idol shatters .
But here is the paradox Harold Mawela wants you to see: God is not in the idol; He is in the breaking of it.
When the prodigal son was feeding pigs, covered in slop and shame, he composed a speech. "Father, I have sinned. Make me as one of your hired servants." He rehearsed his apology, polished his repentance, prepared his theological presentation. But the Scripture says that while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and ran .
Do you see it? The father did not wait for the polished speech. He ran toward the brokenness. The son never got to finish his presentation. He was intercepted by embrace.
You need not compose yourself before coming to God. Come crushed. Come crying. Come as you are. He is already here.
IV. The Akasia Darkness and the Light That Doesn't Flicker
We live in a country that understands brokenness. We understand load-shedding—not just the darkness in our homes, but the darkness in our hopes. Stage six blackouts while our politicians fly private. Potholes that swallow taxis carrying mothers to work. A police station in Akasia operating with only five vehicles to patrol 152 square kilometers while crime statistics climb like the price of bread .
We understand brokenheartedness. We understand the feeling that the systems have failed, that the lights may never come back on, that the morning might not bring relief.
But here is what the darkness taught me: God specializes in unlit spaces.
The most sacred moment in history happened in the dark. When Jesus hung on that cross, the synoptic Gospels tell us that from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, darkness came over all the land (Matthew 27:45). In that cosmic blackout, while creation held its breath, God was doing His deepest work. Not in the light of miraculous deliverance—He did not come down from the cross. But in the dark of sacrificial love—He stayed on it.
That is the nearness that needs no explanation. It is the presence that persists when the miracle doesn't come.
V. A Personal Confession: My Fight With the Silence
I must be honest with you. Writing this devotional has not been an exercise in abstract theology. It has been a wrestling match.
Just last week, I sat on my veranda here in Akasia—the same veranda where I've written books and recorded sermons—and I watched my generator sputter and die. Another night of darkness. Another evening of staring at a cold stove while the neighborhood dogs barked at shadows.
And in that moment, the old lie returned: "Harold, if God is near, why is it so dark? If He is close, why is the generator the only thing that died tonight?"
I had to preach to myself what I am now preaching to you. I had to remind myself that the darkness is not the absence of God; it is the canvas upon which He paints His most brilliant purposes . I had to remember that the same God who was near when my car wrapped around a barrier on the N1 was near when my generator choked on bad fuel. His nearness is not measured by the absence of trouble. It is measured by the presence of peace in the trouble.
VI. The Argument From Reason: Why This Must Be True
Let us engage the intellect, for God is not offended by our questions. He is the Author of logic, the Source of all reason.
If God were only near when we are whole, then wholeness would become our savior. We would worship health, not holiness. We would pursue stability, not surrender. But the Gospel declares that we are saved by grace through faith—and faith, as the Scripture says, is the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).
A common philosophical objection arises: "If God is all-powerful, why does He not simply remove the suffering? Proximity without power is pity, not love."
Let us respond with precision. The argument fails because it confuses the form of love with the substance of love. A father sitting by a child's hospital bed has the power to take the child home. But if the treatment is not complete, removal is not love—it is abandonment to incomplete healing. God's nearness in suffering is not a failure of His power; it is the exercise of His wisdom. He is near because He loves, not despite loving. And His love knows when the healing is complete in a way our pain-blinded eyes cannot perceive.
VII. Practical Wisdom for the Broken
So what do we do with this truth? How does the nearness that needs no explanation become the anchor that holds in the storm?
First, stop performing. You have been acting for an audience that does not exist. God is not impressed by your composed prayers and tidy theology. He is drawn to your honest tears. David didn't write the Psalms in King James English; he wrote them in raw Hebrew anguish. "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" That is not a theological statement—it is a human scream. And God did not rebuke him for it. He preserved it in Scripture.
Second, redefine your metrics. You will never measure God's nearness by your feelings. Feelings are fickle. They change with load-shedding schedules and bank balances. But the Word of God stands. And the Word says He is close. Not "He will be close if you behave." Not "He is close when you can feel Him." He is close. Period. Fact. Eternal truth.
Third, become a student of the dark. What can you learn in the blackout that you could never learn in the daylight? What muscles of faith only develop when the lights are off? I learned to pray without a clock in the darkness. I learned to sing hymns without a hymnbook. I learned that my own voice, lifted in the dark, sounds different—more desperate, more real, more alive.
VIII. The Final Word: He Is Already Here
Beloved, I don't know what broke you. Maybe it was a marriage that fractured like a municipal pipe, leaking pain into every room of your life. Maybe it was a child lost to the streets, to nyaope, to the violence that stalks our townships. Maybe it was a dream that died quietly, without fanfare, without funeral, without anyone noticing but you.
But I know this: He is already here.
You don't need to find Him. You don't need to summon Him. You don't need to perform the right rituals or speak the right incantations. He is not distant in your darkness; He is deepest in it.
The same God who met me in the twisted metal of the N1 is meeting you in the twisted circumstances of your life. The same Jesus who hung in cosmic darkness for you is hanging with you in your personal darkness now.
And one morning—maybe soon, maybe not—the lights will come back on. The sun will rise over the Magaliesberg. The generator will roar to life. The miracle will arrive.
But until then, rest in this: you are not alone. You have never been alone. And the nearness that needs no explanation is the only explanation you will ever need.
"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." — Psalm 34:18
Prayer: Father, meet me in my breaking. Be near when I cannot feel You. And when the darkness tries to convince me otherwise, remind me of the cross—where You stayed when You could have descended, where You loved when You could have left. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Harold Mawela is a Christian author and speaker living in Akasia, Pretoria. He writes at the intersection of faith and daily South African reality, inviting readers to encounter the living God in the messiness of ordinary life.
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