Thursday, November 16, 2023 — one year ago today — will be etched in my memory as the night that started the journey of my worst fears: losing a family member to the cold hand of death. Around midnight, I got the call that Mwansa, our beloved 32-year-old son, had collapsed and was being rushed to hospital. My wife, Felistas, and I prayed and rushed there, but Mwansa was already unconscious. He was to never open his eyes or speak to us again.

While unconscious, Mwansa underwent surgery on Friday morning that showed he had cerebral arteriovenous malformation, which explained the symptoms he used to exhibit growing up and the recent headaches that medical people had failed to diagnose. From Friday to Sunday, believers all over the world were praying for Mwansa’s recovery. Then, on Sunday, November 19, he was pronounced dead. I posted his photo on social media with the words, “Good night, Son. See you in the morning!” Thus began a journey of grief whose depth we had never known before as a family.

His Faith and Marriage

Mwansa was our second son, born in 1991. In 2005, after a few months of wrestling with the question, “How can I know that God has pardoned my sin?” he came to rest in Christ for salvation and was immediately characterized by an unusual zeal for the Lord Jesus. He wanted to know as much as possible about the Christian faith. His intelligence level was above average, and so he dug deep for spiritual gold. I will never forget the day he walked up to me with one of the volumes of The Works of John Owen and said, “Dad, why do people say that John Owen is hard to understand? I am enjoying reading him. He is not difficult.”

Mwansa went on to study architecture in Cyprus but did not practice this profession for long. He realized that his passion lay in discipling younger believers, so he quit his job and started working for the African Christian University in the student labor program, which gave him a lot of time to shape the lives of students.

Three years before Mwansa died, he married Sonile. He had fallen in love with her some ten years earlier and was elated when she finally accepted his proposal of marriage in 2018. Their home became a venue for many youth activities. Using Sonile’s guitar prowess, they had many sing-alongs at their home in their few years together.

His Ministry and Glory

Mwansa also started monthly meetings with young men in the church, which they called “In Understanding Be Men” (after Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 14:20). During these meetings, he challenged his fellow youths to think hard after God. Unknown to us, Mwansa also maintained personal correspondence with many young adults across the city, the nation, and the continent. These came out of the woodwork when they heard of his death and expressed how his personal attention made them feel as if they were the closest of friends to him.

He had a blog and a podcast (The Anti-Modern Blog and Podcast) where he regularly posted challenging messages to fellow young adults so that they could think more biblically about the issues of the day. His last post, “Beware of the Second Sin,” was written on the very day he collapsed.

A few months before Mwansa died, he presented himself before the elders of the church asking that they set him apart (with a friend of his who was also a church member) to the work of church planting. The elders were processing this request when God was pleased to take our son to glory. As you can imagine, we are still asking the question, “Lord, why should you take such a gifted young man who was on the eve of pastoral ministry?” I guess we may never know until we join our son in glory.

Applying God’s Balm

It is now a year since Mwansa left us. Our family has been on a journey of grief during this period. Whereas many people choose to withdraw from public spaces when they suffer such devastating loss, I opted to put into practice what our son Mwansa called “digital hospitality.” By that he meant that Christians should consider having enough of a social-media presence to show the world how their faith governs their response to life’s situations. Anyone reading my posts during that time could tell that I was heartbroken and that my emotions were seesawing between dark grief and shining hope.

After a month of wrestling with God in this way, it dawned on me that I had a grieving family I needed to shepherd. So I started a monthlong series of daily devotions on grief that I sent to each family member, seeking to address the questions on our minds as we wrestled with the loss of a dear son, brother, and husband.

The first devotion answered the question, “Why has this happened to us?” My answer came from Job 1:9–11, where God displays his absolute yet loving sovereignty in bringing a calamity into the life of a choice servant. The last devotion answered the question, “How do we proceed after this tragic loss?” The answer was based on Joshua 1:1, 5–6, where God acknowledges the death of Moses but encourages Joshua and the rest of Israel to press on and accomplish his divine agenda. This was God’s message to us as a family. According to the testimony of my family members, the Lord used this devotional series to apply “the balm of Gilead” to their emotional and spiritual wounds.

Our church’s elders have also taken note of the youths who were devastated by the loss of Mwansa, their mentor, and have been counseling them during this season of grief. The elders have kept me abreast of the impact that Mwansa’s life and death have had on these youths. My prayer is that this awakening will reap much fruit for God’s glory.

A Loss to Steward

Since the homegoing of Mwansa, my wife and I have benefitted greatly from Tim Challies’s book Seasons of Sorrow. Tim and his wife, Aileen, lost their twenty-year-old son, Nick, the year he went to college. Like our son, he died suddenly. Felistas and I had already read the book before Mwansa died. But now we read it again, and this time together, initially one chapter a day and then one chapter every few days, allowing the cordial to soothe our aching souls. What a gift this book has been! A lightbulb moment for both Felistas and me came when Tim wrote about stewarding Nick’s death. He writes in chapter 17,

We’ve been called to a new task now, a new stewardship, and it falls to us to prove faithful in his death. We labored to raise him in a way that brings glory to God; we now labor to release him in a way that brings glory to God. (71)

We have since been talking about that eye-opening concept. One way we have sought to steward Mwansa’s death has been by practically loving his widow, Sonile. We trust that the watching world is seeing what a difference the grace of God brings in a family that honors him. We have also been blowing into the sails of his blog posts by publishing them in book form and making the book available to the age group he passionately ministered to while he lived. May God bless these efforts to the spiritual good of many souls.

‘See You in the Morning’

We still have our dark days and are grateful for the moments when light shines through the gloom. One thought that has proved therapeutic is that what happened to Mwansa was precisely what we were preparing him for. When he was a child in our home, we often pleaded with him to yield his life to Christ in order to prepare to meet his Maker. Well, he was prepared, and he went ahead of us to meet his Savior and his God.

We do not mourn as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Unless Jesus returns first, death will come to all of us. What matters is that we use this temporal existence to prepare for what is permanent. My parting words should not be “Goodbye, Son,” as if we will never meet again. They should be exactly what my parting words were on the day Mwansa died: “Good night, Son. See you in the morning!”