International travel is never without stress, but our experience this week took discomfort to a new level.

We were sitting in an airport hotel in London trying vainly to sleep, as the overnight hours ticked by for our early morning check-in. There was only one problem. The Canadian government requires travelers to produce results of a COVID test taken within 72 hours of arrival in Canada. But labs are not necessarily equipped to come up with the results that quickly. In the end, I spent half the night sending emails and making desperate calls, and a very kind supervisor expedited the results.

I am pretty well finished writing another book. The topic this time is the meaning of freedom from a Biblical perspective.

One of the things I’ve been wrestling with is the fact my freedom is restricted by the people around me. You could say “Welcome to the pandemic!” But it’s more the case that the pandemic has provided an opportunity to find out something the Bible teaches but we often ignore because we don’t like it.

For the last four years, I’ve been praying a very simple prayer: “Lord, open doors and close doors.” It all started with a time of major reset in our lives. We had transitioned from pastoral ministry to full time travelling and teaching. So it was a good time to pray this kind of prayer.

There’s an intriguing paragraph tucked in at the end of Acts 2. It gives a brief description of the first church in Jerusalem. I wish it were longer, but I suspect God kept it short because he didn’t want everyone to try to make an exact replica out of it. But the principles listed there are important.

It starts with this statement: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

For the past year governments around the world have been trying to control a public health emergency by curtailing liberties most of us would never have thought we would have to give up.

In an authoritarian state like China, the government simply imposes what measures it wants and people have to submit. In democratic nations, it’s a little harder than that. You have to persuade people to go along.