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Could we collectively be midwifing a season of hope?

Writer's picture: Stephan VoslooStephan Vosloo

In the beginning of the year, I look for words that might describe the deeper, unseen aspects of the year. I have found that these words often provide context for the events that shape each year, and when I look back on New Year’s Eve, many of those events can be seen as providential rather than mere happenstances.


I think I have three words for 2025: “Season,” “Hope,” and “Purpose.” It may turn out that I’m mistaken, but I believe these words can offer a framework for understanding the events of the last months of 2024—events that I suspect will prove foundational for a new season that began around mid-2024 and will help make sense of what unfolds in 2025.


For me, these three words are closely connected and reinforce each other. I believe humanity is going through a level of collective suffering that has been experienced only a few times in our history. With widespread media coverage and social media amplifying global pain, the entire world seems more aware and engaged than ever before.


Since the COVID pandemic, I have endeavoured to look beyond the pain and loss, and I think I’ve discovered a hidden purpose tied to the unfolding of the cosmos. This insight has given me a profound sense of meaning and anticipation—a hope that carries me through struggle and suffering, with the expectation that a new season is about to be born. While I don’t expect to live long enough to fully experience this new season, I’m still on the lookout for its earliest signs—much like waiting for the first peach blossoms in early summer.


When I speak of a new season, I’m referring to a specific period in the unfolding of God’s purposes. This differs from what certain fundamentalist prophets often describe, which focuses solely on God’s judgments or blessings towards us. In truth, this new season isn’t primarily about us at all—it’s entirely about God.


Paul seems to have caught a glimpse of this purpose, one that enabled him to endure the brokenness of life on Earth. Writing to the Roman church, he said: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” In other words, there is a hope-fueled expectation of something emerging from within humanity—something so profound that it makes the agony of Gaza, Auschwitz, Ukraine, and every form of injustice, rejection, and destruction (whether by fire, water, or war), somehow bearable.


It seems that the key to finding peace in the midst of our shared brokenness is to connect with something yet unseen—something waiting to be birthed from the womb of humanity itself. We can think of it as a collective pregnancy.


Every expectant mother soon realizes that what carries her through those forty weeks is the awareness of the new life growing inside her. Through my years of obstetric experience, I’ve noticed that most women truly connect with this reality only when they feel that first flutter in their belly. Although today’s 3D scans let mothers see their babies much earlier, it’s still the sensation of that initial kick—like a tiny foot nudging from within—that sparks the hope of eventually cradling and nursing a child. This hope sustains them all the way to the onset of labor.


When that first contraction hits, however, everything shifts. In that moment, the life within becomes both a life threatening challenge and a calling, so intense that some might wish to remain in the discomfort of late pregnancy rather than face the rigors of labor. But by then, they know that no pain or struggle can stop what those last forty weeks set in motion. With a renewed hope that the end is near, they plunge into a whole new experience—one that soon leads to the joyful arrival of the life they’ve been waiting for.


Paul seems to have made the same connection between creation and the birth of what is being formed through the collective pregnancy: "All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance."

Rom 8:22-23 MSG


If this metaphor holds, then hope is what will carry us through this current season into the new season that always follows a birth. That hope can be fueled by the movements and discomfort of pregnancy, the pain of contractions, and even the very real existential threat—each acting as a signpost, pointing us toward our ultimate destiny, both as a collective and as individuals.


It seems to me that the very fabric of creation carries a sense of futility. Everything ages, becomes fragile, and eventually disappears. Much like the material a dress is made from, we confront the pain of loss every day as we put on this dress by stepping into a new morning. It might be a treasured bonsai tree that dies, a loved one facing a difficult diagnosis, or the stark statistics we hear from Gaza. Every mother and father knows the fear of loss that goes hand in hand with the joy of expecting a child—a fear that often grows stronger around the time of delivery.


Paul also saw it like that: "For the creation (nature) was subjected to frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration), not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by the will of Him who so subjected it with the hope that nature (creation) itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption [and gain an entrance] into the glorious freedom of God's children." Rom 8:20-21 Ampl


In the delivery room, I often see a woman in labor who needs reminders—whether from her partner or from me—about why her body must endure such pain and discomfort. We “talk her through” the pain, helping her stay focused on the ultimate goal. The moment she concentrates too much on the pain itself, she tenses up and can lose courage. In many cases, this bracing even slows her progress.


This is precisely what Paul is doing: talking us through the pain of our broken world and urging us to stay focused on the final outcome—our full deliverance into the same resurrected form as Jesus, and the complete liberation of creation into the same “glorious liberty.” He’s discovered the purpose behind creation and is using that vision the way a partner in labor uses encouragement—to expand our capacity and bring forth something within us that cannot be formed any other way. Our word for that is "hope".


"That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy." Rom 8:24-25 MSG


If this birth takes place in enough people, humanity and creation might reach a tipping point, where the energy of love, compassion, and forgiveness outweighs the energies of narcissism, control, hatred, and power-seeking. That moment may mark the start of a new season—what John, in his apocalyptic Revelation, calls the "millennial reign" of Christ and his saints.


Picture a simple candle as a metaphor. On the surface, it’s just tallow and wick—nothing more than raw materials. But once you strike the match and let that flame catch, you see what the candle truly is. It surrenders its outer form and releases the warmth and scent hidden inside. In that moment, its real life is revealed: tallow and wick on the outside, flame at the core. It has fulfilled its destiny as a candle.


We’re called to work with the physical stuff of our world, to bring forth—like midwives—the hidden purposes of God so that the unseen becomes visible. Essentially, we help give body and birth to what the Spirit is doing. We are, quite literally, the midwives of the full manifestation of God's hidden blueprint.


I hope this provides at least a measure of comfort when you’re confronted by life’s pain and loss.




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How much this message of hope was needed! Thank you so much, Stephan. We wait in hope, though we endure the travails of the world. 💕 As Hamlet said "Who would fardles bear? Who would suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...?" We can, and must, only because of the hope in Christ.

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Thank you so much Janet. Watch this space. I sense there is more to write about this. The darkness is increasing and if I look at the executive orders Pres Trump has issued and the Hitler salute by his trusted companion, I think that we are going to need to understand something about hidden purposes this year.

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