Welcome to Hyattstown Christian Church!

We’re glad you’re here! Rev. Santos will be providing a new Blog Entry each month. Note that the January 2021 date is the date this page was created.

From Pastor Santos, April 21, 2025

We are just finishing Lent time. Lent time concludes joyfully and victoriously with the resurrection of the Lord. We usually are not particularly concerned about that season. That’s because we went through Lent knowing the end of the story. Nevertheless, it was quite different for Jesus first followers.

Let’s remember the story. Jesus’ disciples and hundreds of followers believed with all their minds and hearts that Jesus was God’s anointed for saving purposes (the messiah). First, it was Peter affirming “you are the Christ, son of the Living God” and sometime later, dozens hailed Jesus as the son of David who came to save them. “Hosana” were the chants.

Their hopes were crushed by Jesus’ arrest, legally dubious trials (yes more than one), tragic death, and burial. It was all over. Isn’t death the end of everything? Certainly it is, unless… unless the impossible happens. And it did happen! The Christ of God came back to life. The word impossible was humiliated and death was robbed of its final point forever. “Where, O death, is thy sting? Where, O grave, is your victory?” said the apostle Paul as he reflected on this. Or as Gloria Gaither taught us to sing: “because He lives all fear is gone, because I know He holds the future”.

We can be confident that the same power that raised Christ from the power of death is with us here and now. He’s with you, he’s with me, is with us all. The Christ of God, now alive, victorious and glorious, is at our side. The feet, once crucified on Golgotha, walk with us today throughout our journey.

The Lord is risen; the Lord is risen indeed!

Comments, thoughts? I would love to hear them!

From Pastor Santos, March 29, 2025

Life is full of ironies. The same thing happens in spiritual life. Many times, I call those spiritual ironies, “glorious ironies”. Don’t you think it is such a beautiful irony that the very first worshipers of the Lamb of God were shepherds? In a like manner, although some few decades after that, that Lamb of God was condemned to the tree of death (the cross), that tree of death was actually bringing life.

One of the very interesting passages of the New Testament, encloses one of those glorious ironic moments. According to Luke, the gospel writer, it was Sunday early morning. Jesus has been killed on the previous Friday. Two of Jesus’ disciples were getting out from Jerusalem likely to a town called Emmaus, not fully aware of the most recent (good) news. Their topic of conversation was Jesus himself, his deeds, his arrest and sad killing.

As they were talking, another pilgrim jointed them and their conversation. Glorious ironies! Guess who was the pilgrim joining their journey? The same one that they thought was dead; they did not even recognize him! Even more, the two disciples accused the Resurrected one to be an ignorant stranger when Jesus asked the two guys about the topic of the day: “Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things which happened there in these days”?

It was not until after dinner, once Jesus was already gone, that the disciples realized that their company, the unknown pilgrim that never identified himself, was actually the center of their conversation.

And here comes another glorious irony, one that is so close to our daily life. Don’t you think that many times, we realize after a specific moment and not during the event itself that Jesus was with us? It does seem that the same Holy feet that once walked in Judea, today walk side by side ours in our daily journey. Want to know a bit more about the event I’m referring to? Take a look to Luke 24: 13-35

Comments, thoughts? I would love to hear them!

From Pastor Santos, March 4, 2025

I have been re-reading some particular passages of the Scriptures with special attention, some sort of spiritual appetizer for the Lent season. The passage of Jesus transfiguration on the top of a mountain as he was in the company of three of his disciples, is one of them. I have found fascination on Luke’s version (Luke 9: 28-36). I have been reading it like in an “enlarged Scriptural combo”: the transfiguration event, the passage that precedes it and the passage that follows it.

Luke appears to be teaching us something that initially we were not considering: Jesus’ true glory is attached to Jesus’ suffering and death. Not wanting to see this is exactly Peter’s initial position: to build a shelter at the top of the mountain and never wanting to go down. That cannot be. That would be our own glory but not Jesus’. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed”, taught Jesus over and over again. What a fascinating way to show God’s glory: with rejection, suffering and death!

This Jesus of Nazareth who was ratified as God’s own Son, by God’s own voice, had and still have words of authority. “Listen to him” is what the Voice added; listen to him! The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed . Listen to him! Suffering is part of this equation, seems to be the resounding echo of the initial divine words!

When we considered the transfiguration passage, once Moses and Elijah disappeared, Luke says “when the disciples looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus”. The one that represented the Law and the one that represented the prophets, both disappeared, were no longer present and Jesus was standing! It seems like Luke, the gospel writer also wants to tell the reader, not only listen to Jesus, but also look at him. The Son of God is certainly what the Law and the Prophets wrote about and he is certainly above them, above the Law and above the Prophets.

That is particularly interesting, the suffering, the rejection and the death don’t disqualify Jesus to be the Messiah; actually, it is what validate him as the Messiah. Even more, suffering is part of thy glory. We cannot take one or the other; death and glory come together.

Comments, thoughts? I would love to hear them!

From Pastor Santos, February 17, 2025

The picture seemed extremely gloomy, from any way to look at it. There were the people of Israel right in the middle of the Crisis, yes, with capital C. They had just left Egypt in a glorious way and Pharaoh had just changed his mind, sending his army to put the people of Israel back into captivity. That was the picture in the rearguard. The situation ahead was just as critical: the Red Sea threatening as a monster. What to do? Where to go? There was no other way to look at it: the end had come.

The truth is that moments like that come to each of us. Moments of a total lack of alternatives which look like a huge dead-end. These are the moments where life seems to conspire against us and mockingly yells at us that we have failed and that everything is over for us.

When such circumstances come to us, let us remember that all is not really lost. God is greater, always greater than any of our crises. For those who have entrusted their lives to the God of life, surrender is not an alternative. Suddenly a miracle happened. The Red Sea itself was left open for the people to pass through. Later, just as Pharaoh’s chariots were in the middle of the road, the jaws of the Sea closed, leaving the pursuing army deadly enclosed within it.

In moments when the impossible surrenders to the will of God and the Red Sea that harasses us prostrates itself reverently before its Creator; when the unrighteous forces that haunt us suddenly cease to be, it is not just a great achievement. That is an Immense blessing, yes, with capital I.

Currently passing through your own Red Sea? If so, this is a story to keep handy: Exodus 14.

Comments; thoughts? I would love to hear them!

From Pastor Santos, January 21, 2025

Psalms are a mosaic of all human emotions and all of them are represented along the psaltery. Then, there are praises psalms, trust psalms, royal psalms and … imprecation psalms (those that curse) and also psalms of the dark night of the soul (the ones of total desperation). Fascinating! Each one of the psalms faithfully depicts the circumstances of each one of us; even here and now. When some can be in a victorious and joyous time, some others can be in distress or with low, really low levels of confidence. That’s the way it is. To believe that all who are a regular parishioner, never experiences moments of desolation and anguish, is not only a mistake, it’s a huge fallacy. Because we have walked with all those shoes in different moments of our life; the shoes of sadness, desolation or loneliness (or maybe we are wearing those shoes right now) we identify so well with the Psalms.

Allow me to make a confession. I am a natural born desperate. Yes, I’m a minister. Yes I wear a stole every Sunday morning as one of the symbols of the ministerial office and I am a natural born desperate. I just don’t have the waiting gene in my genetical package or at least, if I have it, it is severely damaged. Psalm 40, one of the all-times favorites, begins saying “I waited patiently for the Lord.” Well, in my Bible, the one that I study on a regular basis, I wrote the prefix “im” in front of the word patiently, so my Bible says, “impatiently I waited for the Lord.”!

Although I don’t feel too comfortable encouraging you to patiently wait. I certainly, however, can invite you to either patiently or impatiently keep waiting on the Lord!

Why don’t we wait together?
Comments; thoughts? I would love to hear them!

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