By Harold Mawela
I. The Highveld Thunder and The Waiting Soul
The Highveld thunder cracks like God's whip over our tin roofs here in Akasia. I sit on my veranda, watching the rain lash against the jacarandas, and I think about waiting. We South Africans know waiting. We queue for water, for grants, for the lights to come back on during stage-six load-shedding. We wait for justice, for jobs, for the corruption headlines to stop reading like repeat broadcasts . Just last week, I stood in a snaking line at the Soshanguve Home Affairs—three hours of my life I'll never get back—watching frustration simmer on every face.
But there's a waiting that kills, and a waiting that cultivates.
James 1:4 thunders louder than Eskom's failing transformers: "Let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." In a nation sprinting toward shortcuts—quick riches, instant miracles, overnight solutions—God whispers a counter-cultural truth: True power grows in the pause. Your destiny is decoded in your daily delays.
II. The Cult of Hurry vs. The Currency of Kairos
Let me define my terms with the precision this moment demands.
Chronos is Greek for sequential time—the tick-tock of the clock, the load-shedding schedule, the 4:15 pm traffic on the N1. It is quantity.
Kairos is God's time—the appointed moment, the pregnant season, the suddenly. It is quality.
South Africa breathes chronos panic. We want our blessings now-now. Our politicians promise overnight miracles while looting tomorrow's hope. Our prophets announce "instant breakthroughs" for a seed donation. Social media screams, "Demand your destiny! Claim it now!" But God's economy trades in kairos—His sovereign schedule .
Consider the mathematics of Scripture:
· Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac. Twenty-five years of watching his body decay, of explaining to Sarah why they still had no heir, of fighting doubt with every passing moon. The child came not when Abraham's clock demanded, but when God's calendar appointed
· Joseph weathered thirteen years in prison—thirteen years of interpreting dreams for others while his own dream deferred made his heart sick. Potiphar's house, then Potiphar's dungeon. The butler forgot him. Two full years of additional silence. Yet Genesis 49:26 calls those wasted years "blessings of the deep that lie beneath" .
· Moses spent forty years in the wilderness—forty years of sheep and sand—before one burning bush changed everything. The first forty years in Egypt's palace, the second forty in Midian's desert. God spent eighty years preparing Moses for forty years of ministry .
Even creation took six days. The God who spoke galaxies into existence chose process over magic. Divine deliberation, not cosmic impatience.
III. The Akasia Parable: The Fig Tree and The Flood
Let me tell you a story from my own garden.
Three summers ago, I planted a fig tree—a vyeboom—behind my house in Akasia. I dug the hole, mixed the compost, watered it faithfully. For months, nothing. Just a stick in the ground. My neighbor, Mr. van der Merwe, would peer over the wall and shake his head. "Harold, that tree is dead. Dig it out. Plant something that grows."
But I remembered something my grandmother taught me in Limpopo: "The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap."
That fig tree is now taller than my wall. Its branches hang heavy with fruit. The children in the street beg for figs on their way home from school.
Here's what I learned: While I was watering nothing visible, roots were conquering something invisible. The tree's energy wasn't going to leaves—it was going to depth. And depth determines height. You cannot have the crown without first establishing the root.
South Africa, listen to me: The delays you're cursing are the depths you're building. That job rejection? Root growth. That business failure? Root growth. That loneliness, that singleness, that silence from heaven? Root growth.
What you do daily—watering in faith, weeding in obedience, trusting in darkness—determines what you become permanently .
IV. The Logical Argument for Divine Timing
Let me make this intellectually credible. The argument can be formulated thus:
Major Premise: Every purpose under heaven has an appointed season (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Minor Premise: Seasons cannot be manipulated—they can only be endured and stewarded.
Conclusion: Therefore, the one who respects the season inherits the promise; the one who panics forfeits the harvest.
A common objection arises from our context: "But Pastor, you don't understand my situation. I've been waiting five years. My marriage is crumbling. My children are hungry. The Bible says 'ask and receive'—so why haven't I received?"
I hear you. I genuinely do. And I'm not writing this from some air-conditioned office in Sandton. I'm writing from Akasia, where the potholes swallow tyres and the municipal trucks barely run . I know what it is to pray until your knees bruise and wake up to the same problem.
But this objection fails because it misunderstands the nature of kairos. Consider:
1. The farmer doesn't harvest in planting season. You cannot reap what you have not yet sown. And you cannot reap what you have sown before the seed has died. Jesus said, "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed" (John 12:24). Your dream must die before it can rise. That death is not the end—it is the prerequisite.
2. The building doesn't rise without foundation. And foundations are invisible. When we built the new church hall in Akasia, we spent six months just on the concrete slab. Visitors asked, "What have you been doing?" They couldn't see the steel reinforcing, the depth of the excavation, the compaction of the soil. But without that hidden work, the walls would crack.
3. The baby grows in darkness. Nine months in the womb—no light, no visibility, no announcement. Just the slow, mysterious knitting of bone and sinew by the Hand that cannot be rushed.
V. The Prophetic Confrontation: False Gospels of Impatience
Now, I must sound a prophetic alarm against the false gospels breeding impatience in our land.
To the Prosperity Preachers: You have turned God into a vending machine. Insert a seed, press a button, receive a blessing. You tell our unemployed youth that their poverty is a lack of faith, not a broken economy. You sell instant gratification and call it anointing. But the Scripture declares unequivocally: "The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and he adds no trouble with it" (Proverbs 10:22). Notice: He adds no trouble. Your "fast miracles" come with lawsuits, broken families, and burnout—because they are not from Him .
To the Get-Rich-Quick Merchants: I watch the adverts on Mzansi Magic—"Double your money in 24 hours!" "Secret wealth transfer!" "Ancient African secrets revealed!" And I watch our people empty their pension funds chasing smoke. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). And the haste for money is its firstborn child.
To the Politicians: You promise "rapid development," "instant transformation," "overnight solutions." But you cannot build what you will not patiently fund, honestly steward, and wisely govern. Our potholes are prophetic—they reveal the collapse of patience in public office .
VI. The Costly Discipleship Call
True discipleship demands that we embrace the unhurried harvest.
Jesus spent thirty years preparing for three years of ministry. Think about that. Three decades of obscurity—carpentry, family dinners, synagogue Saturdays—for three years of public assignment. The Hidden Years were not wasted; they were essential.
What if your hidden years are not punishment but preparation? What if the silence you're hearing is not absence but training?
I think of my own journey. Before I stood in this pulpit, I sat in the pew—and before that, I sat on the pavement outside the church, too broken to enter. Anxiety attacks pinned me to my bathroom floor in Akasia. I would gasp, "God, I'm useless!" Yet in that weakness, He taught me warfare. Each panic attack became a prayer session. Now I mentor teens in mental health battles. My breakdown birthed a bridge .
Your pain is not pointless. Your waiting is not wasted.
VII. The Wisdom of the Ages for a Nation in a Hurry
South Africa is preparing for the Unity Soweto Concert 2026—a celebration of music, memory, and national unity, marking 50 years since the 1976 Soweto uprising . Fifty years. That's how long it takes for a nation to process trauma and turn it into art. That's how long reconciliation takes.
We cannot rush what God is ripening.
Consider the young creators being celebrated at the Humanz Top 20 Awards—digital trailblazers redefining influence with authenticity . Do you think they built audiences overnight? Those followers were accumulated one post at a time, one connection at a time, one faithful upload at a time.
Consider the 85.3% of South Africans who identify as Christian . That statistic wasn't built in a day. It was built by generations of faithful witness—grandmothers praying in kitchens, Sunday school teachers with flannel graphs, evangelists with worn-out Bibles.
VIII. Practical Application: How to Wait Well
So what do we do while we wait? Four things:
1. Water what you cannot see. Keep praying. Keep obeying. Keep sowing. The seed doesn't know it's growing—it just stays in the soil. You don't need to see progress; you need to trust the Processer.
2. Stop digging up the seed. Impatience is the enemy of inheritance. Every time you doubt, you dig. Every time you compare your journey to another's, you dig. Every time you abandon the process for a shortcut, you dig—and you damage the root .
3. Audit your associations. Each relationship nurtures a strength or weakness within you. If your friends mock patience and praise shortcuts, you will become impatient. Choose companions who understand seasons .
4. Remember the generations before you. Your ancestors waited. They plowed with oxen, harvested with sickles, trusted the rains. They knew that some things cannot be rushed. Recover that wisdom.
IX. Conclusion: The Dawn is Coming
From my window in Akasia, I watch the lights of Pretoria twinkling in the darkness. The generators still hum. The struggles remain. Load-shedding stage four tonight, they say.
But for the heart anchored in God's timing, there is a peace that passes understanding.
You are not late. You are not forgotten. Your dream is not dead—it is underground.
The fig tree teaches us: What appears dormant is actually descending. What looks like death is actually depth. And depth determines height.
Prayer:
Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, grant me the grit to wait and the grace to work. Deliver me from the panic of my generation. Anchor me in the patience of Your purposes. Let my waiting worship You, and my harvest honor You. For Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory—and Yours alone is the timing. Amen.
Harold Mawela is a lead pastor at AFM Akasia, speaker, and author living in Pretoria. He finds God in traffic jams, load-shedding darkness, and the patient growth of fig trees .
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-timing-of-seeds/id1506692775?i=1000754811119
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