Ecc 19

Study Number Nineteen

Reread Ecclesiastes 11.

“let your heart give you joy”

Annie tilted her head to one side as she tried to decide if the flower arrangements on the piano and organ overwhelmed the one on the communion table. Usually she placed smaller arrangements on the instruments but this time she’d put a smaller one on the table with a piece of stained glass behind it. She’d hung mock stained glass windows on the wall behind the choir risers as well. They’d been fun to make; she’d enjoyed watching the purple glass harden after she heated it. They were very simple, just alternating purple and clear glass, but they looked elegant, she thought. She planned to also use them as part of the decoration in the picnic shelter near the beach where Lauren’s wedding was to take place. The shelter and some outlying tables would serve as the site for the reception. Annie planned to make it look a little more elegant yet with pretty tablecloths and tall narrow vases of flowers, though she still intended to preserve the beachy, outdoorsy feel of the ceremony, by using sand and sea shells on the table and possibly transferring the driftwood back drop to some place near the tables.
Annie decided to make the arrangement on the communion table a little smaller yet and walked toward the table to pull a few flowers from it when a low voice said, “It looks great, Annie, a vast improvement on last month’s grouping of wreaths. Was it just me, or did they look like a bunny with big, loopy ears?”
Annie laughed in spite of herself. She adjusted the floral arrangement to her satisfaction and then walked eagerly down the aisle toward Drew. She spoke in a low voice when she reached him. “You shouldn’t say such things. Pastor’s in his office just off the auditorium. His wife put those up. But I did think they looked like a bunny too—two bunnies actually, one on each side of the podium.”
“Both groupings were the same, weren’t they?” Drew said. “Nice to have had two of them, instead of just one, don’t you think? Every bunny needs some bunny.”
“Oh, Drew, stop,” Annie said, but the smile on her face was irrepressible.
Drew smiled back. “Maybe next week Carole can incorporate her cow collection into the church decorations.”
“I think her cows are cute,” Annie said.
“You do not,” said Drew.
“Well—“
“Annie, will you marry me?”
The request was so sudden, so unexpected, Annie found it almost impossible to process. She had been thinking about Carole’s ceramic cows on the window ledge above her kitchen sink and the many other cow items family and friends had given her because they thought she must particularly like them. She’d confided in Annie that she’d actually just kept the figurines in a place where she often saw them because they were her mother’s and she liked to be often reminded of her mom, who had passed away a couple years ago. Annie thought the memories might be painful, but not for Carole. “When I was growing up, my family was almost always a happy one—my memories are happy memories. My kids on the other hand—that’s another story.” She’d been struggling to regain her upbeat outlook on life, since Allison’s marriage. But Annie hastened to assure her that her girls’ childhood memories were primarily happy ones too—that she’d been a good mom.
Annie prayed that Greg and Allison would be able to truly love each other and the baby God had given them. “God is a God of second chances,” she’d told Carole firmly, and she didn’t have to relate her own experiences again for Carole to know immediately what Annie spoke of. Annie had told Carole and her family about her past, a few weeks after she talked to Allison. She still struggled with the guilt but was beginning to truly accept God’s forgiveness and that He still had something for her and perhaps someone as well, someone who would love her and whom she could love in a right way—someone who would have loved the child she shouldn’t have even dreamed of destroying—someone with whom she would never be able to have a child physically but might adopt one. It was Annie’s secret wish. But, could it all be really happening, now? Could it be more than a dream, hope, or prayer for the future? More than a wish? Annie suddenly felt as blessed as she’d always thought Abby was. And on the heels of that thought was the question if her situation was as deceiving as that one had been.
Abby had told Annie several times that she felt fat and ugly and unloved. Annie had almost thought her sister was just trying to make her feel better. Annie, the baby of the family, had only that status going for her. She was a painfully plain child and an awkward adolescent. Actually, Kate and Clare had been rather awkward adolescents too. Really, weren’t most adolescents awkward? But not Abby. Abby had been beautiful, perfect. She’d seemed very happy and confident. Annie thought she was the only one who’d ever heard her sister express feelings of inadequacy, and she’d thought so little of them, until that day. Then Annie’s guilt was colossal, because she thought she might have been able to do something—if only she’d told someone what Abby had said to her—before it was too late.
Abby was a big part of the reason Annie had run away and a big part of the reason she’d turned to Todd, though her sin was still fully her fault. Annie couldn’t believe that if Abby was unable to feel someone could truly love her, Annie could ever hope to have a great love. What man would want her? Surely no man that she’d want. Besides, she had a knack for choosing the wrong kind of man. Even in grade school she’d rather favored the troublemakers.
Could Drew be different? Annie was glad she’d told Drew about Abby and about Todd and the baby one afternoon over coffee. She’d thought he’d for sure lose interest in her afterward—even as a friend, which was what he’d limited himself to after she told him she wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with him. But he hadn’t. He’d been as loving as a person could possibly be and had told her that he’d also struggled and made wrong choices in his past, in his case, in response to parents who fought continually and then divorced when their kids’ were out of the home. His consequent dissolutionment with the Christianity he’d been brought up with had resulted in, for a while, his life’s being nothing like the life of a committed Christian. But the hound of heaven hadn’t left his child alone, and a guilt-ridden Drew had finally, thankfully returned to church and sought counseling, finding joy in again pursuing his relationship with Christ, though not without struggles.
Yet, even after he shared so openly with her, Annie was still somewhat wary of him, particularly of a future with him. But becoming less and less so. She was starting to dare to hope again.
And now it seemed that her dreams were coming true.
She wanted to hear Drew say those words again but was afraid that she’d only thought he said them the first time.
“I’m sorry,” Drew said. “I shouldn’t have done it this way. I wanted to take you for a walk in the park, recite you poetry, I—“
“Stop,” Annie said softly.
“You’re just not ready for it anyway, are you? Even if I’d done it like that—“
“Stop,” Annie said again. “Don’t say anything else. Just let me appreciate those words ‘will you marry me?’ before you regret them. That is what you said, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely. And I have no intention of taking them back,” Drew said quickly. “I love you and I want you to be my wife. I—I’ve hardly ever meant anything more.“ He swallowed hard. His dark eyes were intense and sincere.
She threw her arms around him and kissed him.
When she released him, he said, with a half-smile on his face, “I take it that’s a yes?”
She nodded, her smile lighting up her whole face. “Sometimes things are better said without words.”
“Could you say it without words again?” he asked.
Annie laughed, and proceeded to do so.

Questions to Answer

1. How can your heart give you joy? Why does Solomon say to follow your heart but know that you’ll be judged for following it?

2. What do you think is the point of verse 10?

3. How have both Drew and Annie experienced judgment for following their hearts and joy in following them? How do the instructions regarding youth apply to those who are not as young?

4. Has following your heart brought you joy or judgment? What makes the difference?