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.

Patience. I needed it badly the other day when I waited for over two hours to get through to Westjet because of a malfunction with their online booking system, then had to give up and accept a callback five days later. And it will all be blamed on the pandemic, no doubt.

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.

The world is spending a lot of time arguing about freedom these days, but not a lot of time reflecting on what real freedom is. For us as Christians, freedom is a gift which operates regardless of our circumstances or what external restrictions we are under. It is something much deeper than which party is running the government, or whether you’re for or against masks. It means we shouldn’t get quite as worked up about some of these issues as we do. And it certainly means none of them are worth pursuing at the cost of dividing the body of Christ.

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.