The Orchard of Relationships: A Theological Reckoning with the Souls in Your Garden
Scripture: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." (Proverbs 27:17)
Part One: The Parable of the Uninvited Fig Tree
Let me tell you about my neighbour in Akasia, a man named Thabo. Two years ago, a fig tree sprouted unbidden along the wall separating our properties. Thabo, being a practical man, wanted to uproot it immediately. "It's not mine," he said. "I didn't plant it. Why should I water it?"
I convinced him to wait.
Today, that fig tree stands three metres high. Its branches bend heavy with fruit every December. Children from four neighbouring yards gather under its shade. And Thabo that same Thabo who wanted to destroy it now defends it with a vigour that borders on the absurd. Last month, he nearly fought a contractor who suggested trimming its roots.
What changed?
Nothing changed about the tree. What changed was Thabo's relationship to the tree. He invested in it. He pruned it. He cursed the birds that stole its fruit and praised the rains that fed its roots. Somewhere between the first watering can and the hundredth, the tree stopped being "that nuisance plant" and became his tree.
Here is the law I want you to write on your heart today:
You will never discover a person's value until you invest your care into their growth.
Is it not true that we all feel this? The child who frustrates you at noon becomes the child you would die for by midnight not because the child changed, but because your investment changed you.
Part Two: Divine Appointments Are Not Accidents
Let me sound the alarm against a great deception sweeping through our beloved South Africa. The deception is this: People are either useful to me or useless to me.
We see this poison everywhere. In our taxis, where passengers are not souls but fares. In our corporate boardrooms in Sandton, where colleagues are not image-bearers of God but stepping stones or stumbling blocks. In our churches, where fellow believers are reduced to "connections" on a WhatsApp group—profiled, categorised, and ranked by what they can offer.
The Scripture declares unequivocally: People are not accidents in your path; they are divine appointments.
Let me define my terms with surgical precision:
A divine appointment is not merely a pleasant coincidence. It is a sovereign arrangement orchestrated by the living God, who moves like a Master Gardener through the soil of your chronology, planting specific souls in specific seasons for specific purposes—some for your growth, some for your pruning, and some for your death to self.
Yes, I said death. Because not every relationship is meant to make you comfortable. Some are sent to make you crucified.
Part Three: The Typology of Trees A Theological Framework
Picture a world where every person you meet is a tree in God's orchard. The Apostle Paul understood this when he wrote, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow" (1 Corinthians 3:6). The metaphor is not decorative; it is doctrinal.
Let us classify the trees in your relational orchard:
The Mango Tree of Mentorship
These are the fathers and mothers in the faith. Their fruit is wisdom, seasoned by decades of walking with God. They do not merely give advice; they shed shade covering you with protection while you mature. In my own life, Bishop Desmond, now eighty-three and confined to a wheelchair in Mamelodi, is such a tree. He cannot walk, but his prayers walk through walls. When I was tempted to abandon ministry in 2019, he simply said: "Harold, the devil doesn't attack fruit trees that aren't bearing." That single sentence saved my calling.
The Thorn Tree of Boundary
These are the difficult people the critic, the competitor, the one who rubs you raw. Botanically, thorn trees serve a purpose: they protect the orchard from grazing animals. Relationarily, thorny people protect you from pride, from laziness, from self-deception. Yes, they draw blood. But the blood they draw is often the infection of entitlement.
The Wild Fig of Deception
Here I must be prophetically confrontational. Some trees look like fruit trees but produce nothing but leaves. Jesus cursed such a tree in Mark 11. In modern South African terms, these are the "blesser" relationships—transactional connections dressed in emotional language. A man who wants your body but not your prayers is a wild fig. A friend who celebrates your success only when it serves their networking is a wild fig. A pastor who preaches your wallet more than your worship is a wild fig.
Sound the alarm! We have too many Christians in Akasia, in Soshanguve, in Diepsloot, who are fertilising wild figs while their mango trees wither from neglect.
Part Four: The Apologetic of Pruning A Logical Argument
A common objection I hear, particularly among young believers, is this: "But Pastor Harold, doesn't love mean accepting everyone exactly as they are? Isn't pruning unloving?"
Let me dismantle this error with the precision of a surgeon and the fire of a prophet.
The Argument Formulated:
Premise 1: Love, biblically defined, seeks the highest good of the beloved (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
Premise 2: The highest good of any person is their conformity to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).
Premise 3: Conformity to Christ requires the removal of behaviours, attitudes, and associations that hinder that conformity (John 15:2).
Conclusion: Therefore, pruning is not the opposite of love pruning is the highest expression of love.
Consider the vinedresser. Does he hate the branch when he cuts it? No! He hates the disease that would kill the branch. He hates the laziness that would waste the branch's potential. To refuse to prune is not kindness; it is negligence.
Now let me apply this to a recent South African reality. You have heard of the Two-Pot Retirement System, yes? Government allows you to access a portion of your savings early. On paper, this is "freedom." In practice, many have used it to buy luxury items while their future starves. The constraint—the pot you cannot touch is not oppression; it is protection.
Likewise, God's pruning in your relationships is not oppression. It is protection from your own shortsightedness.
Part Five: A Personal Story—The Year I Lost My Orchard
I am Harold Mawela. I live in Akasia, in Pretoria. I have been writing and preaching for twenty-three years. And I nearly lost everything in 2015 not to sin, not to scandal, but to bad soil management.
That year, I said yes to every relationship invitation. Yes to the young man who wanted mentorship but never showed up on time. Yes to the ministry partnership with a man I suspected was doctrinally loose. Yes to the social commitment that drained my evenings. Yes to the relative who needed "just a small loan" for the fifth time.
I thought I was being generous. I was being foolish.
By November, I was exhausted. My marriage was surviving on fumes. My prayer life had collapsed into a hurried grocery list of requests. And the final blow came when the man I had partnered with the one I had suspected but not confronted was exposed for financial impropriety. My name was dragged through associations I had never approved but never denounced.
I sat in my study, the Johannesburg skyline visible from my window, and I wept. Not tears of self-pity. Tears of self-indictment.
The Lord spoke to me in that moment—not in thunder but in a whisper that landed like a hammer: "Harold, an orchard without walls is not a garden. It is a highway."
That week, I learned the law:
What you do not protect, you will lose. What you do not prune, you will bury.
I drew boundaries. I ended three "friendships" that week painful, bloody, necessary amputations. Two of those people have never spoken to me again. And I sleep peacefully knowing that peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of righteousness.
Part Six: Recent South African Realities—The News from Our Soil
Let me bring this into our present moment. As I write this, our nation is wrestling with coalition governments municipalities where enemies must suddenly become allies. In Tshwane, where I live, we have seen councillors who cursed each other in public now sitting at the same table, forced to govern together.
Is this not a parable of the Christian life?
The Lord Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, has placed you in a coalition government called the local church. You share power with people you did not choose—the loud worship leader, the boring elder, the sister whose testimony always takes forty-five minutes. And God says: Make it work. For my glory.
I read last week about the taxi violence in Mamelodi drivers killing drivers over routes. And I thought: How many Christian families are experiencing "taxi violence" in their own homes? Fighting over routes—who controls the remote, who decides the budget, who gets the final word on the children's education—while the actual destination (God's glory) is forgotten?
A relationship without a shared mission is not a partnership; it is a collision waiting to happen.
Part Seven: The Jesus Pattern The Gardener Who Became the Tree
Everything I have written finds its ultimate meaning in Jesus Christ. For He is not merely the Master Gardener; He is the Tree of Life itself, planted at the centre of God's orchard, bearing fruit for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:2).
Consider the humiliation and the genius of the incarnation:
Jesus left the relational perfection of the Trinity Father, Son, and Spirit in eternal, joyful communion to enter our poisoned soil. He submitted Himself to our orchard management. He was pruned by betrayal. He was fertilised by false accusations. He was harvested by crucifixion.
And on the third day, He became the firstfruits of a new creation.
Here is the theological truth that should shatter your small thinking about relationships:
God is not primarily interested in giving you better relationships. God is primarily interested in using your relationships to make you better specifically, to make you like Jesus.
The colleague who irritates you is not a problem to solve; he is a classroom to attend. The spouse who disappoints you is not a mistake to escape; she is a mirror to examine. The child who rebels is not a failure to mourn; he is a prayer assignment to complete.
Part Eight: Practical Laws for Tending Your Orchard
Let me give you action steps—not theories but laws you can apply immediately.
The Law of the Tenth Row
In farming, wise planters leave space between rows for equipment to pass. In relationships, you must leave space for the Holy Spirit to move. Do not suffocate people with your expectations. The person who needs constant contact does not trust God; they trust control.
The Law of Seasonal Fruit
A mango tree does not fruit in winter. Do not demand summer harvest from someone in a winter season. Learn to read the spiritual seasons of those around you. The friend who cannot give right now may be storing strength for a future outpouring.
The Law of Root Rot
Some relationships look healthy above ground but are rotten underneath. How do you identify root rot? Look for the fruit of the flesh: bitterness, gossip, chronic complaint, sexual immorality. If the root is poisoned, the fruit will follow. And close proximity to rot will infect your own roots.
The Law of the Borrowed Axe
Sometimes, God sends a person into your life for a specific task, not for a lifetime. Like the borrowed axe in 2 Kings 6, it floats into your story, does its work, and floats out again. Learn to release people. The inability to let go is not love; it is idolatry.
Part Nine: Forgiveness as Fertiliser The Non-Negotiable Nutrient
Let me address the elephant in the sanctuary. You have been hurt. Deeply. Betrayed by a parent. Abused by someone in authority. Discarded by a spouse. Used by a friend.
And now I am asking you to fertilise with forgiveness?
Yes. But hear me carefully: Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation.
Forgiveness is what you do in your heart to release the debt. Reconciliation is what you do with your hands to rebuild the relationship. You can forgive someone completely and never speak to them again. This is not contradiction; this is wisdom.
But without forgiveness, your soil becomes toxic. Bitterness is not a fertiliser; it is a steriliser. It kills the very ground where new relationships could grow.
I have sat with too many South Africans who have spent twenty years rehearsing the same offence. They can tell you the date, the time, the exact words spoken. And their capacity to love has shrivelled like a raisin in the sun. Meanwhile, the person who hurt them has moved on, built a house, raised children, and forgotten the whole incident.
Do you see the tragedy? You are drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
The Scripture is unequivocal: "Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13). Not "forgive if they apologise." Not "forgive when you feel ready." Forgive because you have been forgiven.
Part Ten: The Harvest What Your Relationships Will Produce
Let me close with a sobering truth. Your relational harvest will determine the climate of your soul.
If you cultivate bitterness, your soul will become a desert dry, cracked, unable to sustain life.
If you cultivate forgiveness, your soul will become a rainforest—teeming with diversity, resilient against drought.
If you cultivate superficiality, your soul will become a parking lot flat, functional, but producing nothing beautiful.
If you cultivate intimacy with God, your soul will become an orchard fruitful, fragrant, and a refuge for the weary.
I am not speaking in metaphor only. I have watched men and women die—literally die—from relational poverty. They had money, success, and influence. But they had no one who truly knew them. And when the ambulance came for their bodies, no ambulance could save their souls.
Conversely, I have watched poor grandmothers in rural Limpopo—women with no bank account and no formal education—die surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, all of whom rose up and called her blessed. She was rich in the only currency that matters: love made visible through relationship.
Part Eleven: A Prayer for Your Orchard
Let us pray together, not as a formality but as a weapon:
Lord Jesus Christ, Master Gardener of my soul, I confess that I have treated people as projects rather than as persons. I have categorised them by what they can give me rather than by whose image they bear.
Today, I receive the pruning shears of your Spirit. Cut away every relationship that drains my sap without producing fruit. Heal every wound caused by thorns I did not see coming. Fertilise the soil of my heart with your forgiveness, which you purchased with your blood.
Give me wisdom to know the difference between a mango tree and a wild fig. Give me courage to water the relationships that matter and the humility to release the ones that do not.
And most of all, Lord, make me a good tree myself—rooted in you, reaching toward you, bearing fruit that outlasts my brief season on this earth.
For your glory, Jesus. Amen.
Part Twelve: The Final Law
You have read this far. Now I will give you the final law, the one that holds all others together:
You will only love others to the degree that you have received God's love for yourself.
You cannot give what you do not have. A dry well does not produce water. A cold fire does not produce heat. And a person who has not rested in the unconditional, relentless, pursuing love of God will eventually exhaust themselves trying to earn love from others.
Stop performing. Stop striving. Stop trying to be enough for people who were never meant to be your source.
Come to the Gardener. He is not angry with you. He is not disappointed in you. He is holding a watering can, and He is waiting for you to stop hiding among the trees.
The orchard is ready. The harvest is plentiful. And the labourers the labourers are you and me.
Now go. Tend. Prune. Fertilise. Forgive.
And watch what God grows.
© Harold Mawela, Akasia, Pretoria, 2026
"What you do daily determines what you become permanently."
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