Gerry Lynch

Live in Light (A Message for Advent) The speed with which the optimistic era around the millennium passed should teach us to seek eternal, not worldly, riches.

The Light came as a tiny baby who grew up to be King —of an otherworldly realm, who gave His life for His friends thus opening eternal life to wll who trust in Him. God comes to rescue us when we don’t know we need help, in ways we could never imagine. 3/3 www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/12/04/l...

Inside a dimly lit stone church, a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus stands in a niche on the left wall. She cradles a glowing blue glass votive lamp that glows softly. Below the statue, two white candles burn on an ornate wrought-iron stand. To the right, a purple-draped altar is visible, adorned with a white frontal cloth bearing a gold cross. Above the altar hang two colorful religious paintings in the style of early 20th-century sacred art: one depicting robed figures (likely an Annunciation scene), the other showing two women in flowing red and blue medieval-style dresses in a garden. The atmosphere is quiet, warm, and reverent, lit mainly by the flickering candles and the small lamp.

Advent is the beginning of the Church year and a time for new beginnings. The Church begins a journey that will last a year, which starts with people longing for light to come into a world that was often dark. The light indeed came, but in ways they could never have imagined. 2/3

A nighttime photograph of a tall, intricately decorated Gothic-style church spire illuminated against a deep blue-black sky. The spire rises dramatically, adorned with ornate stonework, pointed arches, and geometric patterns, tapering to a sharp point topped by a small red aircraft warning light. The dark sky is speckled with faint stars and subtle streaks of light, but especially by the constellation Orion, giving a serene and majestic atmosphere.

It seems only a few years ago that we were living at a time of optimism: of low inflation, low interest rates, and cheap travel, when the Internet was making the economy stronger and bringing people together. The mood has shifted as these material things have passed away. 1/3

Why Are You Here? You are a seed for something much greater & the universe as nothing but soil compared to the glories you were made for in the Resurrection.

Final point: Jesus cites Moses & the burning bush in arguing with the Sadducees—Moses' first encounter with God that transformed his earthly life beyond imagining. Have faith in the Resurrection, and you may find you too are transformed.

Read it all here: www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/11/10/w... 7/7

So too our resurrection—the same self, gloriously transformed. We are seeds. The universe, in all its glory, but the soil in which we grow. How much greater is the whole cosmos than the soil? So much greater will our resurrected existence be than our lives now. 6/7

If this sounds woo-ey, remember how we take as given metamorphosis in the physical world: from tadpole to frog & caterpillar to butterfly. They are transformed to move in new dimensions, once beyond their conception, yet remaining the individuals they always were. 5/7

Jesus tells them we’ll be transformed, something like angels, beyond the need for marriage. Our materialist age tries to reduce human beings to biorobots, collections of chemicals, controlled by electrical signals—but instinctively we know we’re also beings of soul and spirit. 4/7

Thinking they’ve shown how ridiculous He is, they ask Jesus whose wife she’ll be after resurrection. They make the same mistake many of us do—Christian Resurrection isn’t about life extension but transformation into something different, in a state where time is somehow other. 3/7

They posed a bizarre story like something straight out of a Coen Brothers plot: a woman’s husband dies soon after they marry, and his brother steps in as their laws required; then she works her way through seven brothers as they die one after the next. 2/7

If you think the idea of resurrection is absurd, you aren’t alone. It offends our scientific worldview, and even in the ancient world, the Sadducees—the smart, rationalist, high social class, scholars of Jesus’ Palestine—totally made fun of Him for believing in Resurrection. 1/7

Surely that "should of" been "breathe exclusively" rather than "breath exclusively"?

Prayer, Persistence, and Peace—A Sermon The world won't be perfect; but we're told to pray for God's Kingdom to come on Earth. How do we resolve this tension?

One of the lessons I’ve learned from these recent years of gathering crisis is that too many of those dreams of progress, the ones that have started looking in trouble, thought they could change human nature, or flew entirely in the face of it. www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/27/p...

It was a privilege to review @dannydvincent.bsky.social's documentary for BBC World Service's Heart and Soul on those who escape North Korea and then become Christians as they rebuild their lives in the South.

The Church of England Newspaper (@churchnewspaper.bsky.social)
has paused publication while it seeks a financial way forward: it had been supported by media entrepreneur Keith Young who died in February. Thoughts with staff
at what must be an unsettling & upsetting time. mailchi.mp/012009fa66be...

A blue tractor pulling a red trailer drives down a narrow street lined with historic stone buildings. The architecture features sloped roofs, chimneys, and small windows. On the left, a building displays a sign with a coat of arms, while on the right, a building has a sign reading "GRYC." In the background, a stone church with a tall spire stands under a clear blue sky.

A red convertible car drives past a historic stone building with a sloped, tiled roof and multiple chimneys. The building, labeled "Bankes Arms," features small dormer windows and decorative stonework. The scene is set against a clear blue sky with lush green trees and hills in the background.

We all like a summer evening drive... Corfe Castle, Dorset, 9 July 2025.

Would God Wind You Up? If Jesus truly is God made man, then God has an acute sense of humour!

We expect the saints to be serious, humourless, and so holy halos float over them as they walk down the street. But the Bible records them as real people, with complex characters—and if Jesus truly is God made human, then God has a sharp sense of humour! www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/07/20/w...

Radio review: Sunday and Heart and Soul IT WAS nice to have a genuinely meaty debate on Sunday (Radio 4). Hamit Coskun’s conviction for publ...

In this week's Church Times radio review, I cover Sunday exploring if a blasphemy law is emerging by the back door; and a weird hypermasculine priest in Texas; and Heart and Soul visiting Syrian Alawites who have fled to Lebanon after sectarian mass murder. www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/202...

Don't worry.

Modern Medes and Parthians—A Sermon for Pentecost Despite persecution and even martyrdom, the Church in Iran has grown rapidly in recent decades. It might be the Holy Spirit at work!

I remembered the time in a Church in Belfast I heard that bit about the Parthians and Medes being read in a strong Iranian accent, and so preached on the Church's surprising growth in Iran in recent decades, and martyrdom, and believing because of the works... www.gerrylynch.co.uk/2025/06/08/m...

Wise words.

My radio review this week is quite Radio 4 focused—Clare Balding's Ramblings as she takes on the Camino; Nick Sturdee on Ukraine's disputing Orthodox denominations on From Our Own Correspondent.

The Tankwa Karoo National Park as a summer afternoon turns to evening. #SouthAfrica

PS – Germany is pushing back most asylum speakers at the border starting last week. The era of mass migration into Western Europe is going to end rapidly over the next few years. And that is indeed the net product of countless democratic votes. 6/6

A concomitant of Labour abandoning radical proggies to keep the working-class onside—next time there’s a Batley/Wakefield/Anderton Park school situation, the British state is going head-to-head with a non-violent but deeply ugly side of British Islam. I hope they’re all ready. 5/6

If they do get it right, they could destroy Reform, a party which nobody is quite sure about whose leader people are very unsure about. Here’s the Danish People’s Party’s parliamentary election results: from 21.1% in 2015 to 2.6% in 2022. 4/6

Labour has better fine control over migration policy than EU member Denmark, but employers have no automatic instant access to south/eastern EU workers if labour shortages bite. Labour also probably has to deal with better funded migration NGOs and far more obstructive courts. 3/6

If Labour fails to reduce numbers of arrivals substantially it will break them electorally. But both the right-wingers and open borders folks simply assuming this will fail, for different reasons, are wrong. Something comparable already worked across the North Sea. 2/6

On Starmer’s migration speech—Denmark’s Social Democrats did this. It didn’t crash the economy but did crash the far-right People’s Party. There’s plenty of room for them to screw up the implementation, but this has already worked in a broadly comparable NW European country. 1/6

A week ago I'd never heard of Robert Prevost and a month ago I didn't know what a cardinal *actually* was, but in this thread I will with great authority explain why Pope Leo XIV is wonderful/awful/evil... (delete to fit clickbait target) 1/116

Was 13 years old in 1968, the most tumultuous year in his hometown's history; 11 years old when the Cicero March took place. Fascinating formative influences. 3/3