By Harold Mawela
From my study in Akasia, Pretoria, I am writing this on a Tuesday morning that feels like a loud Friday. The air is thick with the hum of generators, a sound we have learned to love, because it means the power is on. We have officially passed three hundred days without the dreaded load shedding, a modern South African miracle. But if you live in Akasia, or Roodepoort where an explosion recently plunged thousands into darkness, you know the truth: the lights may be on, but the grid is still groaning. Our peace, like the power supply, feels temporary, a fragile thing borrowed against the next fault.
And yet, this morning, I am not thinking about the power grid. I am thinking about a different kind of prison, and a man who slept through his own execution date. I am thinking about Peter.
The Paradox of Peter's Peace
The Scripture is stark and beautiful in its brevity: “The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains” (Acts 12:6). The Greek text emphasizes it was that very night—the night before the trial that would likely end like James's did, with a sword and a shallow grave. James, the brother of John, was already dead. Herod had tasted the intoxicating wine of popular approval when he killed James, and now he was thirsty for more. Peter was the next course in his political feast.
Now, picture the scene with me. Peter is not in a VIP holding cell. He is shackled between two Roman legionaries, his left hand chained to the right hand of one guard, his right hand to the left of the other. This is maximum security, ancient style. He is the filling in a soldier sandwich, a human bookend between two agents of the empire that killed his Lord. And he is asleep. Not just dozing, but in a sleep so deep that when the angel of the Lord appears in a blaze of heavenly light, Peter thinks he is dreaming. He requires a celestial elbow to the ribs just to wake up.
How? How does a man find Peaceful Preparation for a Potentially Permanent Punishment? How do you snore when the sword is being sharpened?
The School of Sovereign Sleep
The answer is not in the circumstances; it is in the school Peter had attended. This was not the same impulsive, sword-swinging Peter who denied Christ in a courtyard. This was a Peter who had been Failed and Forgiven, Restored and Reassigned. He had learned the secret that is not a secret at all. He had learned the sovereignty of God.
This is the first law of the Peaceful Prisoner: "The Peace You Possess In Your Prison Proclaims The Power You Perceive In Your God." Peter could sleep because he had already died. He had died to the illusion of control. He had died to the need to be the hero of his own story. He had died to the fear of man, which is a snare, and had embraced the fear of God, which is a fortress. Albert Barnes, the old commentator, calls it "an instance of remarkable composure, and one of the effects of peace of conscience and of confidence in God".
Let me put it in a formula we can grasp, a Harold Mawela law:
Your ability to rest in the storm is the ratio of your trust in God's sovereignty over your trust in your own strategy.
If you are awake at 3:00 a.m., mentally rewriting your business plan, re-litigating a conversation with your spouse, or doom-scrolling through the latest political crisis, it is not because you have problems. It is because you have misplaced your Priority of Peace. You have taken upon your shoulders a burden that belongs on the throne of God. Peter had tried to be his own savior before—he had pulled a sword in Gethsemane—and it ended in disaster. Now, he was letting God be God. And when God is God, a prison cot feels like a king's bed.
The African Context: Our Modern Prisons
Now, let us bring this down from the marble halls of ancient Rome to the dusty streets of Akasia. In South Africa, we know about prisons. Some of us have family members behind literal bars, a consequence of a crime-ravaged society where police recently made swift arrests for violent unrest in the Eastern Cape over the coronation of a foreign traditional ruler. We see the violence, the xenophobic flames, and we feel the bars of fear closing in around our hearts.
But there are other prisons, no less real. The Prison of Panic over a job market where even graduates drive Ubers. The Prison of Prejudice, where the colour of your skin or the language of your tongue still dictates the doors that open. The Prison of the Past, where the ghosts of apartheid whisper lies of inferiority or superiority. The Prison of the Present, where you are chained to a culture that glorifies amapiano hits and the Mahindra Fusion Fest—enjoyable things in themselves—but uses them as anesthetics to numb the deeper pain of a soul without direction.
Our culture, both in Pretoria and across this beautiful, broken continent, offers a thousand ways to escape, but only one way to truly sleep. It offers Loud Lekombo to drown out the silence of a troubled conscience. It offers Fleeting Festivals to create a temporary high. It offers the False Peace of Power Politics, where men and women scheme and scramble for positions, believing that a title will be a tranquilizer.
But none of it works. You can drown out the noise, but you cannot silence the soul. The Psalmist knew this: "In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety" (Psalm 4:8). The peace is not in the absence of the storm; the peace is in the Presence of the Person.
The Angelic Paradox and the Divine Decree
And then came the angel. The light shone, the chains fell off, and Peter walked out, past sleeping guards who, by Roman law, would soon be executed for their failure. This is the paradox of divine intervention: God's deliverance for one is sometimes another's judgment. But the focus of the story is not on the soldiers; it is on the Saviour who orchestrates a jailbreak with such holy ease that the prisoner thinks he is in a vision.
The church had been praying fervently. And God answered. But He answered in a way that defied all their expectations. They were praying for a miracle, and when Peter knocked on the door, they thought it was his ghost. Their faith was strong enough to pray, but weak enough to be surprised by the answer. This is the second law: "The Purpose of Your Prayer is Not to Inform God of Your Problem, But to Invite God into Your Prison."
We must sound the alarm against a passive, fatalistic faith that says, "Whatever will be, will be." No! Peter's sleep was not the sleep of a stoic who has resigned himself to fate. It was the sleep of a son who has entrusted himself to a faithful Father. He was not passively waiting to die; he was actively resting in the One who holds the keys of Death and Hades. The same Jesus who restored him after his threefold denial could handle a Roman prison cell. The chains were on his wrists, but his heart was in the hands of Christ.
Sleeping Well When the World Is Waking Up
So, my fellow South African, my brother and sister in Akasia and beyond, I challenge you today: Where are your chains? What is the situation that has you bound between two soldiers of anxiety and fear? Is it your finances? Your family? Your future?
I will tell you a secret I have learned in my own life. In 2023, when load shedding was at its worst, I would find myself enraged at Eskom, at the government, at the universe. I was a prisoner to my own frustration. My sleep was stolen by the sound of silence. Then I realized: my anger was not changing the grid, but it was destroying my peace. I had to learn what Peter learned. I had to say, "God, this is Your problem, not mine. You hold the heart of every Eskom CEO and every politician. You hold the sun and the coal. I am going to sleep." And when I woke up, the power was often still off, but the peace was on.
Your chains are not stronger than your Savior. The angel that walked into Peter's cell is the same Lord Jesus Christ who walked out of His own tomb. He has the keys. He can unlock any prison. He can grant you Perfect Peace in a Precarious Place. He can give you Sacred Sleep in a Secular Storm.
May you have Peter's peace in your prisons, sleeping soundly because you trust the One who holds the keys to every chain. May your rest not be an escape from reality, but a profound engagement with the One who is more real than your circumstances. And when you wake, may you find that the doors are open, the chains are gone, and the Light of the World is leading you out into the freedom for which Christ has set you free.
Sleep well. The King is on His throne. And He neither slumbers nor sleeps.
Yours in the journey,
Harold Mawela
Akasia, Pretoria
April 2026
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-denier-to-declarer/id1506692775?i=1000759498652
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