Sandi Hester

The Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and you will give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.  Isaiah 7:14

The verse above is one of many prophecies Jesus fulfilled when He came the first time to this earth.  Jesus fulfilled more than 700 prophecies when He came the first time and there are more prophecies concerning His death than any other subject.  These prophecies concerning His death were very specific too.  Psalm 22 is like reading a medical manual about how a person would die from crucifixion.  When David wrote that Psalm he had never even heard of crucifixion – in fact, crucifixion was not even invented or used for 200 years after David wrote Psalm 22.

I recently learned what the word Advent means – it simply means ‘to come’.  So we celebrate the coming of Christ during Christmas.  But we are actually in between two advents – Christ’s first coming and His second coming.  What a great time of year to reflect back on Christ’s first coming and look ahead to His second coming.  Around our Advent wreath I have placed scriptures about Christ’s first coming and His second coming.  It’s been special to reflect on both. 

Here’s another little picture of the town of Bethlehem.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.  Luke 2:4

But you, Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come from me One who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.  Micah 5:2

I had an idea to paint my own Christmas cards this year.  I knew exactly what I wanted to paint for our cards – the little town of Bethlehem with the stars shining above it.  I’m not sure what compelled me to do this, because I never send out Christmas cards.  I’m just not the Christmas card sending type.  It falls under administrative duties and I don’t have the gift of administration.  In fact administrative stuff really stress me out – I would make a horrible secretary!  I painted the Christmas cards and then, because I don’t send Christmas cards, I just stashed the little paintings aside.  A few of my friends were looking through my paintings and they all loved these little paintings of Bethlehem, so I thought I would share them in my blog for some holiday posts.  I guess you could kind of consider this a blog Christmas card – does that count???  If it does then I can say for once I sent out Christmas cards :).  Let’s consider it official – here’s my Christmas card to you: “Merry Christmas from Grady and Sandi”! 

I made two pictures of the little town of Bethlehem.  I’ll post one now and one later in the month.  Hmmm, that means you’ll be getting TWO Christmas cards from me – wow, I’m outdoing myself this year :).  Oh yea, I’m not sure if you can see it or not, but the name of Jesus is in the stars.