Author: Harold Mawela
Location: Akasia, Pretoria
"He was wounded because of our rebellious deeds, crushed because of our sins; he endured punishment that made us well; because of his wounds we have been healed." (Isaiah 53:5, NET Bible)
I was sitting on my porch in Akasia last Thursday, watching the City of Tshwane trucks trying to unblock a drain that had been clogged for weeks. The smell was terrible. My neighbour, Mr. Dlamini, shouted over the fence, "Pastor, this country is falling apart. Potholes, power cuts, police stations without resources—and now we can't even drain the water."
I laughed. But his frustration stayed with me.
Later that evening, the news broke about another tragedy. The Umtata floods from June were still fresh in our memory—over ninety souls swept away when the Mthatha Dam overflowed . Families burying empty coffins. Children asking questions about God that no parent should have to answer alone. And the comments section? Poison. "Where was God?" "If He is sovereign, He is cruel." "If He is loving, He is weak."
Pick your poison, South Africa. Either God cannot stop the suffering, or He will not. Either way, we reason ourselves into a corner where faith becomes foolishness.
But let me take you to a different corner. A garden. Gethsemane.
The Theology of the Open Wound
Define your terms. Sovereignty is not God sitting on a distant throne with a remote control, pressing buttons to make our lives comfortable. Sovereignty is God in the trenches, taking shrapnel meant for you.
The Scripture declares unequivocally: "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities" . The Hebrew word translated as "pierced" (mecholal) literally means to bore through. This is not a papercut. This is not a metaphorical inconvenience. This is the Creator of the universe, the One who spoke galaxies into existence, allowing Roman iron to rip through His flesh.
Why? Because the sovereignty that refuses to enter suffering is a tyranny that remains aloof. And we have had enough of those tyrants in South Africa, haven't we? Leaders who legislate from Union Buildings while Gauteng drowns in sewage. Sovereigns who demand loyalty but refuse proximity.
Jesus flips the script.
A common objection arises: "But Harold, if God is sovereign, why did the baby drown in Umtata? Why did the truck driver lose his legs on the N1? Why did your own cousin die of AIDS in 2007, leaving three children for his mother to raise?"
Let me answer with logic illuminated by Scripture.
The Argument Formulated Thus:
1. Premise One: God is love (1 John 4:8). Love, by definition, seeks intimacy with the beloved.
2. Premise Two: Intimacy requires entering the experience of the beloved. You cannot love what you refuse to touch.
3. Premise Three: The human experience is drenched in suffering. It is the common currency of fallen humanity.
4. Conclusion: Therefore, a loving God must—if He is to be true to His nature—enter our suffering.
This is precisely what the incarnation achieves. God does not merely observe your pain from the safety of heaven; He wears it. He does not send a get-well card; He becomes the patient. He does not merely heal diseases from a distance; in Jesus, He lets disease (metaphorically) touch Him, and ultimately, lets death consume Him .
The False Sovereign of Self
This is where we must sound the alarm against a particularly deceptive error. The world tells you: "You are the sovereign of your scars. Own your pain. Be the master of your trauma."
I read a song lyric recently that captured this pagan philosophy perfectly: "My crown! My throne! My scars! My own!" . It sounds powerful, doesn't it? Like a warrior reclaiming their story. But it is a lie wrapped in leather and shouted through distortion pedals.
Picture a world where everyone is the sovereign of their own scars. What do you see? We become islands of isolated agony, defending our wounds like territory. "You don't understand my pain." "Your trauma isn't as bad as mine." We build fortresses around our brokenness and call it healing. This is not healing. This is a prison where you are both the warden and the inmate, worshipping a tyrant who wears your face .
The Scripture declares unequivocally: "All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him" (Isaiah 53:6) .
Notice the transfer. Our sin—the source of all suffering—attacked Him. The sovereignty of your scars ends at the foot of the cross. There, the true Sovereign takes ownership. Your scars become His scars. Your wounds become His identity.
The Akasia Principle: Proximity Produces Healing
Let me bring this home. I live in Akasia. Every morning I drive past the burning tyres in nearby blocks, past the informal settlements where children walk kilometres for water, past the churches that preach prosperity while members sleep hungry. We are a nation of scars. Apartheid scars. Economic scars. Pandemic scars. Gender-based violence scars.
We have tried to be sovereign over these scars. We formed a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We wrote constitutions. We held elections. And still, the scars bleed.
Why? Because you cannot heal a nation by rearranging the furniture on the Titanic. You need a new ship. You need a new identity. You need a sovereignty that enters the wreckage and pulls you out.
Is it not true that we all feel the tension? We want God to fix things, but we don't want God to touch things—especially our things. We want a sovereign who manages the universe but stays out of our bedrooms, our bank accounts, our bitterness.
But the God of Isaiah 53 is not that kind of sovereign. He is the God who gets His hands dirty. He is the God who lets the sheep wander and then bears the punishment for the wandering. He is the God who, when we hid our faces from Him, did not hide His face from us .
The Transformation: Tears Become Telescopes
Imagine, if you will, a telescope. It is a long tube with glass at both ends. To the untrained eye, it looks like an instrument of limitation—it narrows your field of vision. But to the astronomer, it is an instrument of revelation—it brings distant glory into focus.
This is what God does with your suffering. Your tears, when surrendered to Him, become the lenses through which you see His glory more clearly. The very thing that blurs your vision in the moment becomes the tool that focuses your faith for eternity.
The prayer is not for the removal of tears. The prayer is for transformation: "Lord, let my tears become the telescopes through which I see Your glory. Transform my brokenness into a bridge for others."
Because here is the final paradox: healed wounds become bridges. The scar on His side became the gateway to the Father's presence. Your healed depression becomes a bridge for the young man in Mamelodi who is contemplating suicide. Your restored marriage becomes a bridge for the couple in Soshanguve sleeping back-to-back in silence. Your financial recovery becomes a bridge for the single mother in Hammanskraal who doesn't know how she will feed her children tomorrow.
The Costly Discipleship Call
This is the moment for unwavering commitment. You cannot sit on the fence. Either Jesus is the Sovereign of your scars, or you are. And if you are the sovereign of your scars, you will spend your life defending them, explaining them, and eventually, being defined by them.
But if Jesus is the Sovereign, then your scars become His property. And He is a different kind of owner. He does not display your scars in a gallery of shame. He displays them as trophies of grace. He does not use your wounds to guilt you into obedience. He uses your wounds to qualify you for ministry.
Reason itself, illuminated by Scripture and confirmed in our deepest longings, compels us to acknowledge that a God who refuses to suffer with us is not worth worshipping. But a God who does suffer with us? A God who does carry our pain? A God who does transform our worst Friday into the best Sunday?
That God is not only sovereign. That God is Saviour.
Go this week and look at your scars. Not with the pride of a false sovereign—"My scars! My own!"—but with the wonder of a redeemed subject. Those scars, once instruments of accusation, have been repurposed. They are now the very places where His light breaks through.
And in that light, we are not just healed. We are sent.
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