Sandi Hester

Never Again

Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat. Revelation 7:16

Doesn’t she capture your heart? She did mine. I saw her in a World Vision magazine we got in the mail the other day. I got the mail right before I started to cook dinner and the urge to paint her was to much to resist – when you’re inspired to paint something you can’t just let it pass because it might not come back. This was another one of those paintings that flowed from the Spirit right out of my paint brush. So I painted this little girl while cooking – that’s pretty good for me because I AM NOT a multitasker. I can’t even talk on the phone and cook at the same time or something will set on fire. I sat down today with my bible and asked the Lord to lead me to the perfect verse for her. Poor Grady was napping while I flipped through my bible and when I found this verse I can’t remember what came out of my mouth, I just remember it was a little on the loud side because Grady was jolted awake from his nap :). The verse captures the painting and the Spirit behind this painting perfectly.

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February 1, 2008

What Are You Eating?

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord until He comes and showers righteousness on you. But you have planted wickedness, you have reaped evil, you have eaten the fruit of deception. Because you have depended on your own strength… Hosea 10:12-13

What a convicting, straightforward, and in your face scripture. God tells us to sow, reap, and break up because it’s time – right now – to seek the Lord. Notice that the wickedness we planted, the evil we reaped, and the deception we ate was all BECAUSE WE DEPENDED ON OUR OWN STRENGTH. YIKES!!! We forfeit righteousness and unfailing love because of our daily dependence on ourselves.

January 28, 2008

Enjoying Springlike Weather

Do you give the horse his strength or clothe his neck with a flowing mane? Job 39:19

After church yesterday Grady and I got the springtime itch because the weather was so nice (especially compared to the weather we’ve been having) so we decided to get out and enjoy it. Grady loves to creek fish so that’s what he did outdoors and I painted. I found a field with some horses in it and decided to try my hand at painting some horses. I think I could have done a lot better job if they hadn’t moved so much! I would get one leg painted and the horse would move – it was very frustrating :). As you can tell I need a LOT more practice with horses – preferably non-moving horses. Next time I think I’ll take pictures and paint them in my studio (AKA kitchen) at home – that way they can’t move on me and I won’t have to be in such a hurry to paint them that I make them look like moose instead of horses. After a while I gave up on the horses and drove around and found an old house I love off of Station Camp road. I found the perfect place to park and painted my heart out. I really like how the house turned out – especially compared to those poor horses! I’ll definitely be painting the house again.

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January 25, 2008

The Mountain Peaks Belong to Him

In His hands are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. Psalm 95:4

Man alive if that doesn’t fire you up I don’t know what will! From the depths to the heights – it all belongs to God. We got to see our fill of mountains on our trip – especially the day we snowmobiled up and down them all day! I have to say, my God has quite an abundant stock of mountain peaks! And not only do the mountains belong to Him, but He owns all the cattle on those mountains as well (Ps 50:10). Praise you Lord, for You alone are mighty!

Here is a quick sketch of the mountains – it’s one of my favorites from the whole trip.

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January 24, 2008

Eating

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. I Corinthians 10:31

This post if dedicated to Mitzi Lindsey, because she got a kick out of my ‘cute little soup’. Well, Mitzi here’s the cute soup again :). I thought it was so cute I decided to paint it one day on our trip. It’s just a quick watercolor sketch I did one day while Grady was out skiing. I enjoyed painting it almost as much as I enjoyed playing with the cute little bowl and lid. I think it must be a woman thing. Women, do you enjoy your food better when it comes out in some cute container? Like when coffee comes out and you get cute little sugar cubes instead of just the plain old sugar packets? I LOVE stuff like that. It doesn’t take much to get me tickled! The Lord knows that too. I wonder if He had a smile on His holy face the day those cute little bowls were made knowing I would one day have fun with it, embarrass my husband (as I took the lid on and off just because it was fun), and give thanks to Him for the little things in life. Even in our eating and drinking we can give glory to God. Ok, speaking of drinking I’d like to say for the record that those bottles in the background are olive oil and balsamic vinegar – NOT WINE :)!

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January 23, 2008

Rooftops

When I looked up ‘roof’ in my bible concordance for this post I got a little tickled. There were 2 scriptures listed – both quite different…

Jesus said, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the ROOFS.” Matthew 10:27

Women, can you think of what the other verse about the roof is???… Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife. Proverbs 21:9 YIKES!

The reason for the roof scriptures are because I painted several rooftop paintings on our trip since our room was up high and it looked down on the valley. Here’s one I painted that turned out fun. I tried to capture the smoke coming out of the chimneys early in the morning.

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January 21, 2008

Snow Shadows

The day is Yours, and Yours also the night; You established the sun and moon. It was You who set all the boundaries of the earth; You made both summer and WINTER. Psalm 74:16-17

Grady is going to shout out a big a-men about God making winter – I can hear him now :). Here’s another sketch from our trip titled ‘snow shadows’, because I loved the shadows as much or more than the actual trees. I’ll be posting more paintings from the trip throughout the week.

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January 14, 2008

Colorado Take 3

This is a self portrait from Saturday when we were on the slopes. And one of Grady with a spectacular view behind him.

The rest are from yesterday’s snowmobiling adventure. We go snowmobiling every time we go on a ski trip because it’s my favorite part of our ski trip. Yesterday was quite an adventure. We went on terrain that I would have never thought I would go on. If the 3rd picture looks like I’m clinging to Grady for dear life, I am. We are on top of a huge mountain (can you tell by the views?). We had just snowmobiled straight up the mountain we’re standing on – I mean straight up it – no snaking up it – just straight up – I was screaming the whole way up! We actually look like we’re in the clouds. We could not have picked a better place to be on the Lord’s Day than where we were. We got to hear a great message ‘preached’ by creation (Ps 19:1) telling of God’s glory. I sang my heart out while we road through the beautiful forest. That’s one thing I love about snowmobiling – the machines are loud so I can praise the Lord all I want. I have to admit I do wonder sometimes (Grady’s going to die that I’m admitting this) if they have microphones in the helmets and listen to you – but I quickly get over that knowing with my horrible singing if they were listening they would quickly turn the microphones off!!! So I really enjoyed the day, the creation, and my God the Creator.

We had a great guide named Mike. He worked very hard that day – mainly because of me – I kept getting stuck. It takes a lot of strength to maneuver those machines and I’m not the strongest girl ever :). At one point, Mike had us go up an incline that was covered in powder – very deep powder (when I stepped off the snowmobile my entire leg disappeared in the snow) and I got stuck going up it. Actually Grady got stuck too, but I think it’s just because he was behind me. Poor Mike had to come back down and DIG OUT both of our snowmobiles – serious hard work. In the first picture you can see that Mike dug part of it out but still had to get it turned around. I’m sitting on the side resting :), but got tired from watching all the hard work and from the fear that had overcome me as we got stuck on the hill – I decided to lay down (or more like collapse) and rest – result of second picture. I thought about sending the second picture to my Mom and telling her I had had an accident, but Grady said that wouldn’t be nice. Today I’m resting and recuperating in the room while I paint and read while Grady is skiing in Vail. I’ll get back out on the slopes tomorrow.

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January 12, 2008

Colorado Take 2

A few more pictures of our trip…

Flowers Grady had for me in our room when we got here – he spoils me rotten!

The two of us in our hotel lobby…

You can’t see this tree very well, but the trees are covered in lights around here – you can at least get the idea – they are beautiful!

Some pictures from the slopes yesterday. The second one is quite interesting. I didn’t plan on this, but I grew a beard yesterday on the slopes :). My hair was all in my mouth and up my nose all day because I forgot to pull it back. It was really weird feeling and even funnier looking! We had a blast together yesterday! Can’t wait to get back out there today.

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January 11, 2008

Colorado

Wash me, and I will be whiter than SNOW. Psalm 51:7

Grady and I are in Beaver Creek Colorado – the same place we came in the Fall. It’s beautiful here and this morning the snow is coming down hard. Thought I would post some pictures for you. You can click on them to make them larger.

First two are from our room and the third is the creek by our hotel…

The first picture you can see my paints set up and where I was painting and the second picture is a self portrait :)…

These are from lunch yesterday. Grady had been on the slopes all morning – nice hair Grady 🙂 (I can’t say much about hair – mine is looking quite ruff in the above picture). I ordered soup for lunch and it came in this really cute pot and it even had a lid! I love cute stuff like that – I had to take a picture of it. The lady took the lid off for me and I put it back on so I could take it off myself :). Grady was embarrassed.

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