The problem with experience is that it is so subjective. Fifty people can experience the same objective event and come away from with fifty uniquely nuanced subjective experiences of that event. This phenomenon becomes particularly acute in our attempts to form meaning from our experiences, for we are not simply wanting to come to clarity on our experiences but what our experiences mean. It is this subjectivity in our experiences that I want to explore in this paper. I will refer to this subjectivity as the way we “frame” our experiences, especially our experiences of suffering and longing. This paper will look at how scriptures frames our experiences, especially how Paul frames the experience of suffering in his letters (esp. in Romans 8). Here we will see how Paul reframes the experience of suffering within the larger eschatological groaning for heaven by using the metaphor of the “pains of childbirth”. This intrinsically hopeful metaphor of childbirth subversively reframes the meaning of suffering, allowing for the experience of groaning to no longer simply be a prelude to death but a sign of coming (eternal) life. This new reframing of the meaning our groaning has the potential to reshape our subjective experience of that same groaning.
One key element that emerges from Paul’s reframing of suffering in Romans 8 is the way that hope makes our groaning the groaning of desire and longing. The Christian has been given the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, a foretaste of heaven, and as first fruit, the Spirit comes to amplify desire not to quench it. As such, the paper will explore Paul’s language in Romans 8, and how it can work to reframe our common experience of lack, desire, want, waiting in the Christian life. To do this we will explore some of the key theological insights on desire from Thomas Traherne and how he theologically grounds our experience of desire, longing, and want as our most noble inclination; the engine, that when rightly directed, drives us toward the beatific vision.