Sandi Hester

One of the things we love most about our church is the worship.  David Moffitt has been our worship pastor for the last 10 years.  He and his wife, Susan, are precious to us.  They have blessed us tremendously with their worship and their lives.  To honor and bless them at their 10 year anniversary our church contacted me about doing a piece of art for them as a gift.  YIKES!!!  PRESSURE!!!!  That’s what would normally be going through my head… but before the church contacted me the Lord had already laid something on my heart to do for them as a gift of appreciation to them – so I already knew exactly (well sort of – at least had a concept in my head) what I was going to do for them.  I knew I wanted to do something with an old hymn from some of the old hymn books I’ve collected at antique stores.  This one was from a hymn book from 1908.  A friend of theirs gave me some suggestions of some hymns that would be special to them and I decided on “All Hail the Power of Jesus Name”.  It was a hymn they had in their wedding and I think it speaks of their heart to call all to look to Jesus because He is Lord of all.

Susan was at my house a while back and fell in love with some old frames I had, so I used one of those to frame their art in.  I knew if nothing else they would like the frame :).  I wanted to do something that highlighted the hymn and something that was simple and beautiful.  I had the idea of doing a layered thing – I wanted the hymn to “float” and be the highlight, but I wanted the background to be simple but pretty at the same time.  It took me a while to get it the way I liked it, but I picked some pages from the bible (from the Psalms of course since David is a worship pastor) and I did some layering.  I wanted to soften the background and came up with using… are you ready for this… dryer sheets to layer on top of the bible pages.  I dyed the drier sheets in tea to color them and they worked perfectly – it gave the piece the soft look I was going for and some texture.  As much as I wanted the hymn to be the focus, I wanted the focus of the hymn (Jesus) to be the main focus.  So I painted that as the highlight of the piece.

I pray it will be a blessing to them, because they have blessed us and our church tremendously over the last 10+ years.  We love you guys!!!!!!!  As always, you can click on the picture to see it close-up.